SEO and growth glossary
A Terms and Definitions
89 plain-English definitions begin with A. Showing page 2 of 3.
A definitions, page 2
- Allow directive
- A robots.txt instruction permitting crawling of a path that would otherwise be blocked by a disallow rule.
- Alt attribute
- The HTML attribute that provides alternative text describing an image for accessibility and image search.
- Amazon SEO
- Optimization of product listings for ranking and conversion within Amazon's internal search engine.
- AMP
- Accelerated Mobile Pages, a framework of HTML restrictions and a delivery cache for fast-loading mobile pages.
- AMP cache
- A content delivery network that serves preloaded AMP pages to users from search and other surfaces.
- AMP carousel
- A discontinued SERP feature that showcased AMP-formatted articles in a horizontally scrollable list.
- AMP HTML
- A restricted subset of HTML used to author Accelerated Mobile Pages.
- Anchor distribution
- The breakdown of anchor text types pointing to a page or domain, evaluated for naturalness in link analysis.
- Anchor link
- A hyperlink that jumps to a specific section of the same page using a URL fragment.
- Anchor tag
- The HTML element a, used to create hyperlinks between resources.
- Anchor text
- The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, used by search engines to interpret the linked page's topic.
- Anchor text ratio
- The proportional breakdown of anchor text types pointing to a page, used to gauge link profile health.
- Answer box
- A SERP feature that displays a direct answer to a query above the standard organic listings.
- Answer engine optimization
- Optimizing content and structure to be selected as the answer in featured snippets, voice answers, and AI summaries.
- Answer-first writing
- A content structure that places a concise direct answer at the top of a page before further detail.
- Anthropic-AI bot
- A web crawler associated with Anthropic, used for content collection relevant to its AI systems.
- AOV
- Average order value, the mean revenue generated per transaction.
- AP style
- The Associated Press writing and style standards, widely used in news and editorial content.
- AP Stylebook
- The reference manual published by the Associated Press defining its grammar, usage, and citation rules.
- Apex domain
- The root level of a domain name with no subdomain prefix, also called a naked or bare domain.
- APIs-Google
- A Google user agent used for fetching content related to its APIs and developer products.
- App deep link
- A URL that opens a specific screen within a mobile app rather than a web page.
- App indexing
- The historical practice of making mobile app content discoverable in Google search results.
- App shell
- The minimal HTML, CSS, and JavaScript required to render the static frame of a Progressive Web App.
- App Store Optimization
- The discipline of improving an app's visibility and conversion within mobile app store search and browse.
- Apple Business Connect
- Apple's platform for managing business listings across Apple Maps and related services.
- Apple Maps
- Apple's mapping service used in iOS and macOS, an important surface for local business discovery.
- Applebot
- Apple's web crawler, used to power Spotlight, Siri, Safari suggestions, and related services.
- Applebot-Extended
- An Apple user agent token that signals whether content can be used for AI training, separate from search indexing.
- Article schema
- A structured data type used to mark up news, blog, or scholarly articles for rich result eligibility.
- Article spinning
- The black hat practice of automatically rewriting content to produce many near-duplicate articles.
- AS
- Authority Score, Semrush's domain-level metric estimating overall site authority on a 0 to 100 scale.
- ASO
- Common abbreviation for App Store Optimization.
- Attribution
- The methodology used to assign credit for a conversion across the marketing touchpoints that influenced it.
- Audience
- A grouping of users defined by shared characteristics or behaviors, used in analytics and advertising.
- Audience trigger
- A condition in GA4 that adds users to a defined audience based on their actions or properties.
- August 2023 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in August 2023.
- August 2024 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in August 2024 affecting site quality assessments.
- Austin update
- A 2004 Google algorithm update that targeted manipulative on-page tactics such as hidden text and meta tag stuffing.