Glossary: C

Canonical Tag

The markup that names a page’s canonical URL. Without one, search engines choose for you, and they do not always choose the page you would have.

We work on this: Website Migration SEO

Canonical URL

The address you want a search engine to treat as the real one when the same content exists at several. Named by the canonical tag. Getting it wrong splits signals that should have accumulated on one page.

We work on this: Website Migration SEO

ChatGPT

The AI assistant published by OpenAI. It answers from training plus live retrieval, and published comparisons suggest it draws more heavily on a brand’s own website than some other assistants.

Citation

A word that means two different things. In AI search it is a source an answer engine drew on, normally linked. In local SEO it is a listing of your business name, address and phone on a third-party directory, normally with no link at all.

Citation Share

The proportion of sources cited on a given question that belong to you. The AI search sense of citation, not the local SEO one. The clearest single measure of AI visibility, and usually the first to move.

We work on this: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Claude

The AI assistant published by Anthropic. A smaller share of the pages it opens are on the brand’s own site than with some other assistants, which raises the value of sources you do not control.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Clicks divided by impressions. In search it measures how compelling a result looks, which makes it a title and description problem far more often than a ranking problem.

Content Decay

The slow loss of traffic to a page as it ages and the subject moves on. Expected on news content, and a sign of neglect on evergreen content.

Context Window

How much text a model can consider at once. It sets a hard limit on how much of a page can inform an answer, which rewards content that is complete in short passages.

Conversational Search Optimization

Preparing content for questions asked in full sentences rather than keywords, including the follow-up questions that come after the first one. Full definition, examples and application

We work on this: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Conversion Rate

The share of visits that complete the action you wanted. The number that decides whether traffic is worth anything, and the one most often reported without its denominator.

We work on this: Analytics and Reporting

Core Web Vitals

Google’s measures of loading, interactivity and visual stability. A ranking factor, but a modest one: they decide ties rather than outcomes.

We work on this: Technical SEO Services

Crawl Budget

How much of a site a search engine will fetch in a given period. Only a real constraint on large sites, where wasted crawling means important pages go unseen.

We work on this: Technical SEO Services

Crawler

A program that fetches pages automatically. Search engines, AI companies and tools all run their own, and they can be allowed or blocked independently.