Letter G23 terms in the glossary

Identifying where a user is connecting from. It allows ads to be targeted to a specific area, the nearest pickup point to be shown, and currency or language to be matched accordingly.

In local SEO, it decides who even gets to see a business listing in the first place - for services that cover a single region, this usually matters more than nationwide ranking.

A technique for showing different content, prices, or language depending on where the user is connecting from - which country, region, or city - based on IP address or a device’s location permission.

In advertising, it lets a campaign be limited to a business’s actual service area, avoiding payment for clicks from places where the order or service couldn’t be fulfilled anyway.

A program for agencies and specialists running email campaigns and marketing automation workflows on the GetResponse platform. It includes access to technical support and training materials.

A platform for showing ads in search results, on YouTube, in Gmail, and across a network of partner sites. Billed mainly on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis.

Its biggest advantage is intent: the ad reaches someone who is actively looking for a solution. Profitability depends on correct conversion tracking - without it, the account optimizes for clicks instead of sales.

A program awarded to agencies that exceed a set threshold of managed ad spend, keep their team’s certifications current, and demonstrate campaign performance.

It requires annual renewal. It doesn’t guarantee results on any given project, but it filters out agencies without a documented track record.

The reverse of Google Ads: here the site owner provides space for ads and earns from clicks and impressions. Ads are chosen automatically by Google’s system.

A sensible model for sites with heavy informational traffic. On a company website it works against its own interest - it sends the visitor to a competitor for a fraction of a cent.

A complex set of rules that determines a page's position in search results. Google updates it regularly to better match results to user intent.

It takes into account, among other things, content quality and uniqueness, the inbound link profile, loading speed, and behavior on mobile devices.

SEO optimization means adapting a page to these expectations - not outsmarting the algorithm, since that only works briefly and ends in a drop.

A free Google tool showing where users come from, what they do on the site, and which paths end in a conversion.

The value of its reports depends on correctly configured events and goals. Without them, analytics only measures pageviews - which says the least about revenue.

A free informational listing for a business shown in Google Search results and Maps - with address, opening hours, photos, and customer reviews.

For local businesses, this is often the first point of contact with a potential customer, even before they visit the website.

A snapshot of a page saved by Google the last time its bot visited it. It used to be used to check how the search engine sees a site.

Google discontinued the public cache preview in 2024. The URL Inspection report in Search Console now serves the same purpose.

A mechanism that lowers the visibility of, or removes from the index, sites that do not comply with Google's quality guidelines. It can be applied algorithmically or manually by a reviewer.

The most common causes are duplicate content, an unnatural link profile, and Black Hat SEO techniques. Getting out from under a filter requires removing the cause and can take longer than building visibility from zero.

A filter that lowers the rankings of sites with thin, duplicated, or search-engine-only content. Folded permanently into the core algorithm since 2016.

The practical takeaway still holds: a site built from hundreds of similar pages targeting keywords performs worse than a dozen or so pages written for people.

A filter aimed at unnatural link profiles: link farms, directories, link-exchange schemes, and mass exact-match anchor text.

Since 2016 it has run in real time as part of the core algorithm, and it more often devalues suspicious links than penalizes the entire domain.

A profile with an address, opening hours, photos, and reviews, shown in Google Maps and local search results. The service now operates under the name Google Business Profile.

For businesses serving local customers, this can matter more than the website itself. What decides it is data completeness, up-to-date hours, and steadily collecting reviews.

A free tool reporting the queries a page shows up for, its rankings, click counts, and indexing and structured-data issues.

The only source of keyword data that comes directly from Google. The starting point of every SEO audit - it shows the real state, not estimates from third-party tools.

One of the placements for Google Ads campaigns - ads appear among Google's search results, in response to users' specific queries.

Effectiveness in this network depends mainly on how well keywords match and on ad quality relative to search intent.

Shows the relative popularity of queries over a chosen period and region. Reveals seasonality, rising trends, and the point where interest in a topic fades.

It reports relative values, not search volumes. It’s used to choose timing and direction, not to forecast traffic volume.

A change Google introduces to its search algorithm - from minor tweaks to major updates that noticeably shift the rankings of many pages at once.

Tracking such updates and adapting SEO strategy to them is part of ongoing work on a site's visibility, not a one-time action.

A program that crawls the web and collects page content for the search engine’s index. It revisits sites periodically to check whether their content has changed.

What it sees is shaped by the robots.txt file, noindex tags, internal link structure, and the sitemap. Blocking the bot by mistake can knock an entire site out of the results.

A graphic technique of gradually changing color along an axis or radius. Used for backgrounds, transitions, and depth effects.

Practices not explicitly banned but at odds with the spirit of the guidelines: buying sponsored articles without disclosure, mass-generated content, artificially built link profiles.

The risk is that the line shifts along with the algorithm. What’s tolerated today can be penalized retroactively after the next update.

An approach that starts with a blank slate, without having to maintain existing code, plugins, or integrations. The opposite is brownfield - working on top of an existing system.

It can be faster and cleaner, but it requires migrating data, URLs, and content. On a project like this, a neglected redirect map can cost all the visibility that had been built up.

WordPress’s default editor since version 5.0. Content is assembled from blocks - paragraphs, images, galleries, columns - instead of a single text field.

The name references Johannes Gutenberg. For an editor, it means assembling pages faster without a developer’s help, as long as the available block set is limited to what the design allows for.