Local SEO and AI search glossary
34 terms you will meet in an audit report, a proposal or one of our articles, each explained in a few sentences. The first group covers Google Business Profile and Google Maps. The second covers how AI assistants choose which business to name.
Google Business Profile and Maps terms
The words that come up when a business tries to rank in Google Maps and in the three results above the map.
- Google Business Profile Also: GBP, formerly Google My Business
- The free listing a business manages on Google. It holds the name, address, phone, hours, categories, photos, posts and reviews that appear in Google Search and Google Maps. For a local business it usually matters more than the website, because most customers see it first. Google Business Profile optimization
- Map Pack Also: Local Pack, Local 3-Pack
- The block of three businesses Google shows with a map above the ordinary results for a local search. Most calls and direction requests from a local search go to these three, which is why local SEO is largely the work of getting into them. How the Map Pack works
- Local Finder
- The longer list of businesses that opens when someone taps "More places" under the Map Pack. It uses the same ranking as the three above it, with more results and filters for rating and opening hours.
- Primary category
- The one category on a Google Business Profile that tells Google what the business mainly is, such as "Italian restaurant" or "Plumber". It has more effect on which searches a profile appears for than any other field. Additional categories widen the range but carry less weight.
- Attributes
- The yes or no facts on a profile, such as outdoor seating, wheelchair access, free Wi-Fi or accepts cards. Google uses them to answer filtered and descriptive searches such as "dog friendly café", so an empty attribute list removes a business from those results. Ranking for attributes
- Service-area business
- A business that travels to its customers and has no shopfront, such as a plumber or a mobile groomer. On Google it hides its address and lists the areas it covers. It still ranks most strongly near the address it was verified at.
- Proximity, relevance and prominence
- The three things Google says decide local ranking. Proximity is how close the business is to the searcher. Relevance is how well the profile matches the search. Prominence is how well known the business is, judged from reviews, links and mentions. Only proximity cannot be changed.
- NAP Also: Name, address, phone
- The three details that identify a business. Search engines compare them across the profile, the website and directories. When they disagree, for example an old phone number on one listing, Google is less sure the listings are the same business.
- Citation Also: Local citation
- A mention of a business with its name, address and phone on another site, usually a directory. Consistent citations support the details on the Google profile. In AI search the word has a second meaning, covered further down this page.
- Review velocity
- How steadily new reviews arrive. A profile that gets a few reviews every month looks active to Google and to customers. One that got fifty in a week two years ago and none since does not. How reviews affect ranking
- Google posts
- Short updates, offers and events published on a Google Business Profile. They appear on the profile in Search and Maps. Regular posts show the business is open and active, and give customers a reason to act. How often to post
- Verification
- The step where Google confirms a business is real and at the address it gave, by video, phone, email or postcard. An unverified profile cannot be fully managed and may not appear in results.
- Suspension and reinstatement
- Google can suspend a profile it believes breaks its guidelines, which removes it from Search and Maps. Reinstatement is the appeal: the owner submits proof that the business is real and compliant. Common causes are keywords added to the business name and an address the business does not operate from.
- Duplicate listing
- A second Google profile for the same business at the same address. Duplicates split reviews between them and confuse Google about which one to rank. They are merged or removed, not left in place.
- Place ID
- Google's permanent identifier for a location on Maps. Tools use it to find a profile exactly, and a review link is built from it.
- Rank grid Also: Geo-grid
- A way to measure local ranking from many points across an area instead of one. Each point shows where the business ranks for a search made from there. It shows how far from its door a business stays in the top three, which a single ranking number hides.
- Near me search
- A search such as "pharmacy near me", or one where the phone adds the location by itself. Google answers with the businesses closest to the searcher that match and are open, so hours and proximity weigh heavily. How near me searches work
- Local landing page
- A page on a website written for one location or one area served, with its address, hours and content about that place. Multi-location businesses need one per branch so each Google profile has its own page to link to. Multi-location SEO
- LocalBusiness schema
- Structured data added to a web page that states the business name, address, hours, phone and type in a format machines read directly. It does not change what visitors see. It removes guesswork for search engines and AI assistants.
- Apple Business Connect
- Apple's equivalent of a Google Business Profile, controlling how a business appears in Apple Maps, Siri and Spotlight. It is free to claim and often left unclaimed.
AI search terms
The words for how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google decide which business to name when someone asks them.
- AI Overview
- The answer Google writes at the top of some results pages, generated by its AI model from pages it has indexed, with links to the sources. For a local question it can name businesses directly.
- Generative engine optimization Also: GEO
- The work of making a business easy for AI assistants to find, describe correctly and recommend. It overlaps with SEO but the goal is different: being named in a written answer, not ranked in a list of links. AI search visibility
- Answer engine optimization Also: AEO
- An older name for much the same work as GEO: writing content so a search engine or assistant can lift a direct answer from it. In practice the two terms are used interchangeably.
- Citation (AI)
- A source an AI answer links to. Being cited means the assistant read your page. It does not mean the answer recommended you: a page can be cited in an answer that names a competitor.
- Recommendation
- When an AI answer names a business as a choice for the person asking. This is the outcome that brings customers, and it depends on reviews, consistent details and third-party mentions more than on being cited.
- Entity
- A distinct thing a search engine or AI model recognises, such as a business, a person or a place, as opposed to a string of words. A business with a clear entity has the same name, address and description everywhere, so machines know every mention refers to the same thing.
- Knowledge Graph
- Google's database of entities and the facts that connect them. The information panel shown for a brand search is drawn from it. AI answers lean on the same facts.
- Grounding
- When an AI assistant checks live sources, such as a web search or Google Maps data, before answering, instead of relying only on what it learned in training. Grounded answers reflect your current hours, reviews and website.
- Hallucination
- An AI answer that states something false with confidence, such as wrong opening hours or a service a business does not offer. It is more likely when the facts about a business are missing or contradict each other online.
- AI crawler
- A program an AI company runs to read websites, such as GPTBot from OpenAI, ClaudeBot from Anthropic and PerplexityBot. A site that blocks them in robots.txt cannot be read by those assistants.
- llms.txt
- A plain text file at the root of a website that summarises the site for AI models and points to its most useful pages. It is a proposed convention, not a standard every assistant follows.
- Zero-click search
- A search that ends on the results page because the answer was already there, in the Map Pack, a profile or an AI Overview. For local businesses the call or direction request often happens without any website visit.
- E-E-A-T Also: Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust
- The qualities Google's quality guidelines ask its reviewers to look for in content. It is not a single ranking score. It is a description of what trustworthy content looks like: written by someone who has done the thing, with their name on it.
- AI visibility
- How often and how accurately a business appears in AI answers for the questions its customers ask. It is measured by asking the assistants those questions and recording who they name. Check yours in the free audit
See these terms applied to your business
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