Glossary of search terms

Where your page appears in Google’s results for a particular search, counting from the top. Position 1 is the first ordinary result. It changes from search to search, and can differ slightly between people and places, so a single reading is a guide rather than an exact fact. What matters most is the direction it moves over several weeks.

The first ten ordinary results for a search. Most people never look further, so moving from position 12 to position 8 usually matters far more than moving from 40 to 30, even though it is fewer places.

How many times a link to your site appeared in someone’s Google results, whether or not they clicked it. It is reported in Google Search Console. Impressions without clicks usually mean you are appearing, but too far down the page or with a title that does not persuade.

How many times someone clicked through to your site from Google’s results. Of all the figures in Search Console, this is the one closest to actual customers.

Clicks divided by impressions: the share of people who saw your link and chose it. A low rate on a search where you rank well usually points at the page title or description rather than the ranking itself.

Google visiting your pages to read them, done by a program usually called Googlebot. A page has to be crawled before it can appear anywhere. New sites are crawled less often, which is one reason they take longer to show up.

Google adding a page it has crawled to the collection it draws results from. A page that is not indexed cannot appear in any search, however good it is. Google does not index every page it crawls, and Search Console’s Pages report shows which were left out and why. How to check whether Google has found your website.

A file on your website listing the pages you want Google to know about. Most website builders create one automatically. Submitting it in Search Console helps Google find new pages sooner, though it does not guarantee they will be indexed.

A small file that tells search engines which parts of a site not to crawl. A mistake in it can hide a whole website from Google, which is worth ruling out early if a site is not showing up at all.

An instruction on a page telling Google not to include it in results. Useful for pages like a basket or a thank you page, but a common reason a website disappears: some builders switch it on while a site is being made, and it is easy to forget to switch it off.

The title a page gives itself, which Google usually shows as the large clickable line in its results. It is one of the clearest signals of what a page is about, so it should contain the words people search for, not just your business name. Google sometimes rewrites it if it does not match the page well.

A short summary a page gives of itself, which Google often shows under the title in its results. It does not change your position, but it is your one line to persuade someone to click, so it is worth writing as a reason to choose you. Google may show other text from the page instead.

Links to your website from other websites. Google reads a link from a relevant, trusted site as a vote of confidence, which is one reason long-established businesses tend to outrank new ones. They are earned slowly and are the hardest part of ranking to do yourself.

Your free listing on Google Maps and in the local results that appear for searches with a place in them. For a business serving a local area it can matter as much as the website itself, and a complete profile with genuine reviews is one of the most effective things a local business can do.

Google’s free tool for website owners. It shows which searches your site appears for, how often people click, which pages Google has indexed, and any problems it has found. If you set up one free tool for your website, make it this one.

The one address Google treats as the real version of a page, when the same page can be reached in several ways, for example with and without www. Redirecting the other versions to it is normal and good practice, and Search Console will list them as pages with a redirect.