AEO: Answer Engine Optimization. A technical term for the Generated responses and zero-click responses, this is a new term that you might hear.

AI: Artificial Intelligence, through the use of algorithms, can provide real-time responses. This can be implemented in the items below.

Article Syndication: Distributing articles such as blogs or an informative page to trusted sources in order to create backlinks and generate referral traffic.

Average Session Duration: The average time that a user has spent on the website during a single session. A good benchmark is between 1 and 5 minutes, which determines user engagement based on time.

Backlinks: Base value is a link from one domain to your domain, falling under strong referral traffic.

Call Clicks: How many times the call button was used on a device that can make phone calls from the GBP.

Convent Generation: Content can be created through AI generation. Some businesses utilize this technology in order to save time on page copy.

Crawl and Index: Crawling and indexing pages is what a search engine will do when it needs to organize information.

Device Engagement: Same premise as User Engagement but to show what devices are being used to view the website.

Direct user: Any user that visits the website by searching anything directly related to the business. Examples include business name, practice name, business owner's name, address, phone number, or direct web address.

Directory Listings: NAP data that is stored inside various business databases to make it easier for sources to view business data.

Direction Requests: How many times the button to get directions was clicked from the GBP.

E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Used to gauge what is being built with the Google Business Profile.

GA4: Shorthand for Google Analytics 4, the platform used to track user data.

GBP: Shorthand for Google Business Profile.

GMB: Shorthand for Google My Business, this is the legacy term for GBP.

Google Analytics/Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Google platform to track website data. Includes all user-based data by tracking devices that visit the website.

Google Business Profile (GBP/GMB): Google-based profile used to help identify your business online, allowing users to view a business. The Google Business Profile is important to display your business’s NAP and build E-E-A-T.

Google Search Console (GSC): Google platform used to identify search volume. Primarily used to track data such as keywords, clicks, and impressions.

GSC: Shorthand for Google Search Console.

Generated Responses: Answers based upon several trusted combined sources, commonly implemented by search engines such as Google, Bing, and ChatGPT. Also known as zero-click responses.

Hyperlocal Content/Hyperlocal Pages: Service area and keyword-focused pages or content created and added to websites in order to update the website, build authority, and strengthen expertise with search engines.

Impressions: This is the number of times that your website has made an impression on someone else. If you search “dentist near me” and scroll through all the websites without clicking on anything, every website that was within view of the user would log an impression for “dentist near me.” Impressions are used over rankings because rankings are volatile while impressions provide stable data. Impressions can also be utilized to determine the need for a special or ad to be run in order to get more interactions.

Keyword Visibility: The list of keywords that the website has been seen for using data from the Google Search Console.

Landing Pages: Any initial page that a user will visit from a search. The most common will be the homepage, blog pages, and online ad specials pages.

Leads: Any individual interested in a product or service that you provide. They can be classified by how interested they are in a product:

• Cold lead: Someone interested but has a high bounce rate.
• Warm lead: Someone somewhat engaged, such as page views and direction requests.
• Hot lead: Someone interacting with the business or practice, such as phone calls, messages, contact forms, or appointment requests.

Local Pack: Known as Google Places or Local Pack/Google Local Pack. The list of 3-4 Google business profiles when searching for a product or service, next to a small maps view in most cases.

Maps Views: How many impressions come from the maps view on Google. It is tracked in the same way as impressions but on the larger map on Google.

NAP: Name, Address, Phone number. Used as an acronym with Google Business Profiles.

New Users: The number of unique devices that land on the website that have not been on the website during that time period. Sometimes clearing caches and browser history can cause Google to identify an old user as a new user.

Organic User: Any user that visits the website by searching an organic keyword. Examples of organic search terms can be “dentist near me,” “Botox near me,” or “vitamin supplements near me.” Anything based around a service or product will yield organic identification for a user.

Page Views: The section of the report breaking down where users are viewing the most pages. Most commonly, homepages, online ad/specials landing pages, and blogs will be the top pages viewed.

Referral User: Any user that visits the website from an external domain. Can be directed from insurance companies, directory listings such as Yelp or the Better Business Bureau, and social media traffic. There have been cases where online ad traffic has been categorized as referral traffic, but this doesn’t always happen.

Robots.txt: A text file within the website files that instructs what pages need to be crawled and indexed by the search engine. This is important for SEO.

Searches or Search Impressions: The data gathered from the Google Business Profile based on how many times the Google Business Profile has made an impression on someone. It is similar to GSC impressions. This data comes from the local pack.

(SEO) Schema: The use of structured data, or schema markup, to help search engines understand and categorize content on a web page.

SEO: Shorthand for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO Report Definitions:

• User Sources: The channels defining the source of the user.
• User Overview: The data going over the general traffic of users coming to the website.
• Total Users: The number of unique devices, both new and old, coming to the website. The devices will never repeat.
• Sessions: How many instances of the website have been launched within that time period. This will help show how many users came back to the site.
• Views: Number of pages viewed amongst the group of users.

Sitemap: A page on a website that functions as a hub for all pages, utilized by search engines to crawl and index pages.

Unassigned: Usually any user visiting the website using a VPN or something to mask their device.

User Engagement: A basic pie chart showing page views based on user source. Showing if Organic, Direct, or Referral users are engaging with more pages. Ideally:

• 35-75% towards organic for SEO growth.
• 20-35% towards direct for brand presence.
• The remainder goes towards all other categories.

User Overview: The data going over the general traffic of users coming to the website.

User Sources: The channels defining the source of the user.

Views: Number of pages viewed amongst the group of users.

Web Clicks: How many times the button to view the website was clicked from the GBP.