Local SEO glossary

Google's AI-generated summary shown at the top of some search results, with links to the sources it draws on.

The preferred address of a page, declared with a link rel="canonical" tag, so search engines consolidate duplicates such as www and non-www versions.

Any mention of your business's name, address and phone on another website, such as a directory, a map platform or a trade association list.

Google's term for pages created to rank for specific, similar searches that lead users to intermediate pages less useful than the real destination, such as a town-swap template. It's against Google's spam policies.

A grid of points around a business at which a rank tracker checks the map results, showing how ranking changes with the searcher's location.

Geogrid tracking explained →

Google's free business listing, formerly Google My Business. It powers your entry in the map pack and on Google Maps.

A business that both serves customers at their sites and receives them at its own address, such as a pallet yard that delivers and also lets buyers load at the gate.

A proposed plain-text file at the root of a site that summarises it for language models. Optional and not required by any search engine.

Work that helps a business appear when people nearby search for what it does: in the map pack, on Google Maps, in regular results and in AI answers.

The schema.org type for a business with a physical location or service area, with subtypes such as Electrician or RecyclingCenter.

Copy-paste examples →

The block of usually three businesses with a map that Google shows for local searches, above or among the regular results. Also called the local pack.

Google Business Profile →

A short summary in a page's HTML that search engines may show as the snippet under your title link.

Name, address and phone number. NAP consistency means writing them identically on your website, profiles and directory listings.

Citations and NAP →

The main category on a Google Business Profile. It's one of the strongest relevance signals for which searches you appear in.

Request for quote. In machining and fabrication, the buyer sends drawings and quantities to several shops and compares quotes.

A file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which paths they may fetch. Each AI and search crawler documents the user-agent name it obeys.

A business that serves customers at their locations rather than at its own. On Google Business Profile it can hide its address and list up to 20 service areas instead.

Profiles for yards and plants →

A website page about a service in a specific area you serve, with details only that area has. Useful when real; a doorway page when it's a template.

Service-area pages →

Code in a page that states facts in a standard vocabulary (schema.org) so machines don't have to guess. JSON-LD is the format Google recommends.

The clickable headline of a search result, usually taken from the page's <title> tag.