Global Digital Marketing Glossary
From international SEO basics to AI search and paid advertising: clear explanations of the terms that matter when you market across countries and languages.
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404 page
404 is a status code that tells a web user that a requested page is not available.
A
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B strategy in which marketing and sales focus jointly on a defined list of high-value target companies.
AI Citations
AI citations are the sources that AI search tools such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity link to or name when generating an answer.
AI Crawlers
AI crawlers are bots that AI companies use to collect web content, either to train language models or to find sources for AI search answers.
AI Max for Search
AI Max for Search is a set of AI features in Google Ads that expands Search campaigns beyond their keywords and writes ad text from your website.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the sources they draw on.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) means optimizing content so that search engines, voice assistants and AI tools use it as the direct answer to a question.
Attribution Model
An attribution model defines how credit for a conversion is shared among the marketing touchpoints a customer interacted with before converting.
B
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites to your site. Search engines treat relevant, trustworthy backlinks as a signal of authority.
Baidu Webmaster Tools
Baidu webmaster tools is a powerful platform provides lots of metrics that can help webmasters and SEOs improve their site's ranking in China's most popular search engine's organic search results.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service as part of Microsoft's Bing search engine which allows webmasters to add their websites to the Bing index crawler, see how their website is performing and it offers tools for troubleshooting.
Brand Mentions
Brand mentions are references to a brand on other websites, in reviews, forums, social media or AI answers – with or without a link.
C
Canonical tag
A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when the same or very similar content is available at several addresses.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who click a search result or ad after seeing it: clicks divided by impressions.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of geographically distributed servers that speed up the delivery of web content.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors or clicks that complete a desired action, such as a purchase, sign-up or enquiry.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's metrics for real-world user experience: loading speed (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the average amount spent on advertising to win one conversion, such as a lead or a sale: costs divided by conversions.
Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per click (CPC) is the amount an advertiser pays for each click on an ad. Average CPC is the total cost divided by the number of clicks.
Country Code Top Level Domains (CCTLDs)
Country Code Top Level Domains or CCTLDs are domain names that are assigned to countries and territories based on the ISO 3166 standard.
Crawl budget
The crawl budget concepts takes into consideration that search engines have limited crawling resources and cannot crawl every page on the www instantaneously.
Customer Match
Customer Match lets advertisers upload their own customer data to Google Ads to reach, exclude or find people similar to existing customers.
D
Demand Gen
Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type that shows visual ads across YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Google's display inventory to create and capture demand.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is identical or very similar content available at more than one URL – a common issue on international websites.
E
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – the qualities Google's quality raters use to judge how reliable content is.
Enhanced Conversions
Enhanced conversions improve conversion measurement in Google Ads by sending hashed first-party data, such as email addresses, along with conversions.
F
Featured Snippet
A featured snippet is a highlighted answer that Google shows at the top of the search results, quoted from a web page with a link to it.
First-Party Data
First-party data is information a company collects directly from its own customers and visitors, such as website behaviour, CRM records and newsletter sign-ups.
G
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The GDPR is the EU's data protection law. It also applies to companies outside the EU that offer goods or services to people in the EU or monitor their behaviour.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making content visible and cited in AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting means delivering content or ads to users based on their location – a key setting in international SEO and paid search.
Google AI Mode
AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience that answers complex questions with an AI-generated response and links to its sources.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's current web and app analytics platform. It measures user behavior with an event-based data model and replaced Universal Analytics in 2023.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is Google's free listing for businesses, shown in Google Search and Maps with address, opening hours, reviews and photos.
Google Consent Mode
Google Consent Mode passes users' cookie consent choices to Google tags, so analytics and ads respect consent while measurement gaps are partly modelled.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is Google's free tool for monitoring how a website performs in Google Search and fixing indexing issues.
H
hreflang tags
Hreflang tags send signals to Google and other search engines about the language you are using on a specific page and optionally which geo-location it is targeting.
I
ICP Registration
All websites that are hosted in Mainland China must obtain ICP registration before going live.
Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking pages within the same website. It helps users navigate and tells search engines which pages matter and how they relate.
International link building strategy
A good international link building strategy is to create relevant links from websites in all your targeting countries.
International SEO
International SEO is the optimization of a website so that search engines show the right language and country version to users in every target market.
K
Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization happens when several pages of the same website compete for the same search query and intent, weakening each other's rankings.
Keyword Match Types
Keyword match types control which searches can trigger your ads in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising: broad, phrase or exact match.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the process of finding and prioritizing the search terms your target audience uses, based on search volume, intent, competition and business value.
L
Large Language Model (LLM)
A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate language – the technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed file format that gives large language models a curated, Markdown overview of a website's most important content.
Local ranking signals
A well-thought-out global SEO strategy encompasses strong local ranking signals.
Localization
Localization adapts content, offers and websites to a specific market – going beyond translation to cover language variants, culture, currency, legal requirements and local search behavior.
M
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising is Microsoft's ad platform for search ads on Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and partner sites, with LinkedIn profile targeting for B2B.
N
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords prevent ads from showing for irrelevant searches in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, protecting budget and relevance.
O
Offline Conversion Import
Offline conversion import sends sales and qualified leads from your CRM back to Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, so bidding can optimize for real business results.
P
Performance Max
Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type that uses AI to show ads across all Google channels – Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps – from a single campaign.
Q
Quality Score
Quality Score is Google Ads' 1–10 rating of how relevant your keywords, ads and landing pages are compared to other advertisers.
Query Fan-Out
Query fan-out is the technique AI search uses to split one question into many sub-queries, search them in parallel and combine the results into one answer.
R
Remarketing
Remarketing shows ads to people who have already visited your website, used your app or interacted with your brand.
Return on ad spend (ROAS)
Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the revenue generated for every unit of currency spent on advertising: revenue from ads ÷ ad spend.
robots.txt
The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which areas of a website they may or may not crawl. It controls crawling, not indexing.
S
Search Console International Targeting
Search Console International Targeting used to give webmasters the options to specify which country a website is targeting.
Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
Search engine advertising (SEA) means paid ads in search results, such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, usually billed per click.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in organic, unpaid search results and attracts more relevant visitors.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The SERP is the page a search engine shows in response to a query – with organic results, ads, AI answers and other features.
Search intent
Search intent is the goal behind a search query – whether the user wants information, a specific website, to compare options or to buy something.
Server-Side Tagging
Server-side tagging moves tracking tags from the browser to a server you control, improving data quality, privacy control and page speed.
Smart Bidding
Smart Bidding is Google Ads' set of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to optimize bids for conversions or conversion value in every auction.
Structured data
Structured data is code (usually Schema.org in JSON-LD) that describes a page's content to search engines and can make it eligible for rich results.
T
Topic Cluster
A topic cluster is a group of pages on one subject: a central pillar page linked to detailed pages on related subtopics.
Transcreation
Transcreation is the creative adaptation of marketing content for another market, keeping its intent and impact rather than its exact words.
U
UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are tags added to a URL that tell analytics tools where a visit came from, such as the source, medium and campaign.
W
Website Migration
A website migration is a major change to a site's domain, structure, platform or design that can significantly affect its search visibility.
X
XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs of a website you want search engines to crawl and index, helping them discover pages faster.
Z
Zero-Click Search
A zero-click search is a search that ends on the results page without a click on any website, because the answer is already shown there.