# Glossary

> Plain definitions of the SEO, local, AI and Rankfinity terms used across the app, from ARP and DR to INP, IndexNow and MCP.

## Rankfinity terms

**Credits** — the unit you pay in. Paid actions show their price in credits on the button. See [How credits work](/docs/credits).

**Hold** — credits reserved when you start a paid action. Settled for what was delivered; the rest is returned.

**Project** — one website, optionally with one Google Business Profile. All data is stored per project.

**Run** — one rank tracking check of your keywords, or one AI visibility check of your prompts.

**Scan** — one map grid check of a keyword.

**Snapshot** — saved data from a lookup (domain, keyword, backlinks) that you can reopen for free.

**Your lookups** — your personal list of past lookups in Domain overview, Keyword, Research and Site audit.

**Daily watch** — a cheaper daily check on top of your normal schedule. See [Daily watch](/docs/daily-watch).

**Smart scan** — a map scan that stops in directions where you are clearly outside the top 20, so you pay for fewer points.

**Not measured** — the data does not exist or was not fetched. Rankfinity never shows missing data as zero.

**White-label** — reports and client links branded with your client's name and colour, optionally without the Rankfinity signature.

## Search terms

**SERP** — search engine results page: everything Google shows for a search, including ads, maps, snippets and organic results.

**Organic results** — the normal, unpaid results.

**Position / rank** — where your page appears. Position 1 is the top.

**Depth** — how many results a rank check looks through (Top 20 up to Top 100). Beyond the depth, a keyword is "not found".

**Search volume** — average monthly searches for a keyword in a location.

**KD (keyword difficulty)** — 0–100 estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top 10.

**Intent** — what the searcher wants: informational, navigational, commercial or transactional.

**CPC** — cost per click advertisers pay for a keyword (shown to administrators only).

**Ad value (est.)** — what a site's organic visits would cost as Google Ads clicks. See [Ad value (est.)](/docs/ad-value).

**Featured snippet** — an answer box at the top of the results quoting one page.

**People also ask** — a box of related questions with short answers.

**AI Overview** — Google's AI-written summary at the top of some results, with source links. **AIO** in Rank tracking marks keywords where one appeared.

**AI Mode** — Google's conversational AI search.

**Impressions** — how many times your site appeared in Google results (Search Console).

**Clicks** — how many times people clicked to your site from Google (Search Console).

**CTR (click-through rate)** — clicks divided by impressions.

**Average position** — your average position in Search Console, counting impressions.

**Striking distance** — keywords at positions 4–20: close enough to page one or the top 3 to move with modest work.

**Cannibalisation** — several of your pages competing for the same query.

**Share of Voice (organic)** — your estimated share of the clicks for your tracked keywords, compared with competitors.

**Organic competitor** — a site that ranks for many of the same keywords as you.

**Overlap** — common keywords as a share of a competitor's keywords.

**Broad site** — a very large site with tiny overlap with you (forum, marketplace), hidden from competitor lists by default.

## Local terms

**Google Business Profile** — your business listing on Google Search and Maps.

**Local pack** — the map with three businesses shown in Google results for local searches.

**Grid** — the points around your business from which a map scan searches.

**ARP (average rank position)** — your average map position over all scanned points. Lower is better.

**Coverage** — share of grid points where you were found.

**Top 3 coverage** — share of grid points where you are in the local top 3.

**NAP** — Name, Address, Phone. Keeping them identical everywhere helps local rankings.

## Links

**Backlink** — a link from another site to yours.

**Referring domain** — a distinct site that links to you.

**Dofollow / nofollow / UGC / sponsored** — link attributes telling search engines how to treat a link.

**Anchor text** — the clickable text of a link.

**DR (Domain Rating)** — Domain Rating by Ahrefs, a 0–100 measure of a site's link strength.

**Domain rank** — a separate 0–100 link score from our link index, shown on backlink screens.

**Link gap** — sites linking to your competitors but not to you.

## AI visibility terms

**Prompt** — a question asked on AI platforms, written as a customer would ask.

**Mention** — an answer names your business.

**Citation / cited** — an answer links to your website.

**Visibility** — share of answers that mention you.

**Share of Voice (AI)** — your mentions out of all brand mentions in the answers.

**Sentiment** — the tone of answers about you.

**Sources** — the web pages an AI answer relies on.

**Query fan-out** — the web searches an AI runs to build an answer.

**Measure via** — how answers are collected: API, live browser capture, search results capture, or from rank tracking.

## Site terms

**Crawl** — reading your site page by page by following links.

**Health score** — 0–100 summary of the site audit.

**Errors / warnings / notices** — failed checks by severity: critical and high, medium, low.

**Status code** — the server's response: 200 OK, 301/302 redirect, 404 not found, 5xx server error.

**Canonical** — a tag naming the main version of a page.

**noindex** — a tag telling search engines not to index a page.

**robots.txt** — a file telling crawlers which paths they may visit.

**llms.txt** — a summary file for AI assistants.

**XML sitemap** — a file listing the pages you want indexed.

**hreflang** — tags linking language or country versions of a page.

**Schema / structured data / JSON-LD** — code that describes the page's content to search engines.

**Core Web Vitals** — Google's page experience metrics: **LCP** (loading, good ≤ 2.5 s), **INP** (responsiveness, good ≤ 200 ms), **CLS** (layout stability, good ≤ 0.1).

**FCP / TTFB** — first content shown / time to first byte from the server.

**Field data / lab data** — real-user measurements over 28 days / one simulated test.

**p75** — the 75th percentile: 75% of visits were this fast or faster.

**IndexNow** — a protocol to notify Bing, Yandex and other engines instantly about changed URLs.

**URL Inspection** — Google's check of whether a URL is indexed and why not.

## Integrations

**Search Console** — Google's free tool with your site's search clicks and impressions.

**GA4** — Google Analytics 4, which measures visits and actions on your site.

**MCP** — Model Context Protocol, the standard that lets Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants use Rankfinity's tools. See [Connect Claude or ChatGPT](/docs/mcp).