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Local SEO and AI search glossary: 37 terms explained in plain English
Marketing for local businesses now mixes three vocabularies: classic SEO, Google Maps and AI search. Here is every term you are likely to hear, defined in plain English.
AI search terms
AI search terms describe how assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI features find and quote businesses. The core idea is that these tools write an answer and cite a few sources, so the goal shifts from ranking a link to being named or quoted. These are the terms you will hear most often.
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| GEO (generative engine optimization) | Making a business easy for AI assistants to find, trust and quote. |
| AEO (answer engine optimization) | Another name for GEO, focused on being the direct answer. |
| AI Overviews | The AI-written summary Google shows above some search results. |
| AI Mode | Google’s conversational search mode that answers with sources, including Maps data. |
| Ask Maps | Google Maps’ Gemini-powered feature that answers questions from profiles and reviews. |
| Citation | A source an AI assistant links to or names in its answer. |
| LLM (large language model) | The kind of AI that powers ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. |
| Grounding | When an assistant looks up current web pages before answering. |
| OAI-SearchBot / GPTBot | OpenAI’s crawlers for ChatGPT search and for training. |
| llms.txt | A text file that summarizes a site for AI tools; cheap to add, unproven as a ranking factor. |
| Markdown twin | A plain-text copy of a page that AI agents can read without parsing the design. |
| MCP (Model Context Protocol) | A standard that lets AI agents query a site’s information directly. |
Google Maps and local terms
Local terms describe how a business appears on Google Maps and in the local “map pack” of three businesses shown for searches with local intent. Most of them relate to your Google Business Profile and to keeping your business details consistent across the web. These definitions follow Google’s own vocabulary where it exists.
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Google Business Profile (GBP) | Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps. |
| Map pack / local pack | The three businesses Google shows with a map for local searches. |
| Primary category | The one category on your profile that best describes your business; a top ranking factor. |
| Service area business (SAB) | A business that goes to customers and hides its address on Google. |
| NAP | Name, address and phone; it should match everywhere it appears. |
| Citation (local) | Any listing of your business details on another site, like Yelp or a directory. |
| Bing Places | Microsoft’s version of a Business Profile; it feeds Bing, Copilot and ChatGPT. |
| Apple Business Connect | Apple’s tool to manage how your business appears in Apple Maps and Siri. |
| Local Services Ads (LSA) | Google’s pay-per-lead ads for screened local service businesses. |
Classic SEO terms
Classic SEO terms describe how Google finds, reads and ranks web pages. They still matter for AI search, because most assistants start from pages a search engine can already read. If an agency’s report uses a term you don’t know, it should be on this list; if it isn’t, ask them to explain it in one sentence.
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Indexing | Google storing a page so it can appear in results. |
| Search Console | Google’s free tool that shows how your site appears in search. |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Microsoft’s equivalent of Search Console, with an AI citation report. |
| IndexNow | A way to tell Bing and others the same day that a page changed. |
| Schema / structured data | Code that labels facts on a page (name, prices, hours) for search engines. |
| Canonical | A tag that tells search engines which URL is the official version of a page. |
| hreflang | Tags that connect the English and Spanish versions of the same page. |
| Core Web Vitals | Google’s measures of page speed and stability: LCP, INP and CLS. |
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | How long the main content takes to appear; under 2.5 seconds is good. |
| Backlink | A link to your site from another site. |
Measurement terms
Measurement terms describe how you know whether a website and its marketing are working. The most important one for a service business is the quote request, because traffic and rankings only matter if they turn into people asking for a price. Ask any provider to report these in plain numbers every month.
| Term | Plain-English definition |
|---|---|
| Quote request | A form, call or text asking you for a price; the number that matters most. |
| Conversion rate | The share of visitors who ask for a quote. |
| Impressions | How many times your site appeared in search results. |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | The share of impressions that became clicks. |
| Cost per lead | What you spend on a channel divided by the quote requests it brought. |
| UTM tags | Labels added to a link so analytics knows where the visit came from. |
Want these applied to your business instead of defined? Start with the free AI visibility checker or a free written analysis.