SEO and growth glossary
M Terms and Definitions
78 plain-English definitions begin with M. Showing page 1 of 2.
All M definitions
- M-dot redirect
- A redirect from a desktop URL to a mobile m-dot equivalent based on user agent detection.
- M-dot site
- A separate mobile-only website hosted on a subdomain such as m.example.com.
- Maccabees
- An informal name for a Google update around December 2017 affecting low-value pages.
- Machine translation
- Translation produced automatically by software rather than a human translator.
- Macro-conversion
- A primary, business-critical conversion such as a purchase or qualified lead.
- Mailto link
- A link with the mailto scheme that opens the user's email client to compose a message.
- Malware warning
- A browser or Search Console warning indicating that a site is distributing malicious software.
- Managed hosting
- A hosting arrangement where the provider handles server administration, security, and updates.
- Manifest file
- A JSON file describing a web application for browsers and Progressive Web App installation.
- Manual action
- A penalty applied to a site by a human Google reviewer for guideline violations.
- Manual actions report
- A Search Console report listing any active manual actions affecting a site.
- Manual link
- A backlink obtained through deliberate human placement or outreach.
- Manual penalty
- Another name for a manual action, applied by a human reviewer.
- Map pack
- A SERP feature showing local business listings alongside a map.
- March 2023 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in March 2023.
- March 2024 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in March 2024 with extensive helpful content effects.
- March 2025 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in March 2025.
- Marketing funnel
- A conceptual model of how prospects move from awareness to conversion.
- Marketing qualified lead
- A lead deemed by marketing to meet criteria for sales engagement.
- Marketplace listing
- A product listing within a marketplace platform such as Amazon, Etsy, or Walmart.
- Marketplace SEO
- Optimization of listings to rank within third-party marketplace search engines.
- Markup helper
- A Google-provided tool for generating structured data markup for common content types.
- Mass-produced content
- Content created in volume with little human judgment, typically considered low quality.
- Max-image-preview directive
- A robots meta value controlling the maximum size of image previews shown in search results.
- Max-snippet directive
- A robots meta value controlling the maximum length of text snippets shown in search results.
- Max-video-preview directive
- A robots meta value controlling the maximum length of video previews shown in search results.
- May 2020 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in May 2020.
- May 2022 core update
- A broad core ranking update released by Google in May 2022.
- May Day update
- A 2010 Google update affecting long-tail query rankings.
- Media query
- A CSS feature applying styles based on device characteristics such as screen width.
- Mediapartners-Google
- A Google user agent used by AdSense to evaluate page content for ad targeting.
- Medic update
- An informal name for an August 2018 Google update that significantly affected health and YMYL sites.
- MedicalEntity schema
- A schema.org type representing medical entities such as conditions and treatments.
- Mention frequency
- The number of times a brand or entity is mentioned across a corpus, used in AI visibility analysis.
- Merchant Center
- Common abbreviation for Google Merchant Center.
- Meta description
- An HTML meta tag providing a summary of a page, often shown as a snippet in search results.
- Meta description length
- The character length of a meta description, with practical SERP truncation around 160 characters.
- Meta keywords
- A meta tag historically used to list keywords, no longer considered by major search engines.
- Meta refresh redirect
- A client-side redirect implemented through an HTML meta tag, weaker than a server-side redirect.