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Glossary

Glossary of local search and AI search terms

By Youssef Hodaigui, Mindflow Marketing · Last reviewed November 1, 2026

This glossary explains, in plain English, the search, marketing and credential terms home-service and contracting owners hear from agencies, from Google, from licensing boards and in their own reports. Each entry gives a short definition, what the term means for a service business, and the source's own wording where it has documented it. Rules are quoted from Google's help and developer pages, licensing boards and the organizations that run each program, with the date we read them, and Mindflow figures come from our own research. We add terms as our guides use them.

02

Business listings

  • NAP: your business name, address and phone number, which should match everywhere you're listed.
  • Local citation: any online listing or mention of your business name, address and phone number, such as a BBB page or a directory profile.
  • Entity: a distinct thing, such as a business, person or place, that search systems recognize as one specific thing; for a contractor, its name, address, services and license.
  • Knowledge panel: an automatically generated information box Google shows for people, places, organizations and things in its Knowledge Graph; local businesses use a Business Profile instead.
  • Brand SERP: the search results page people see when they search your business name, usually your site, your Business Profile, review sites and directories.
04

Your website

  • Schema markup: code on a web page that gives search engines facts about the page, such as your business name, services and contact details, in a standardized format.
  • E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, the aspects Google says its systems look for when deciding which content is most helpful; Google calls trust the most important.
  • Entity home: the one page on your site, usually the About or home page, that states the facts about your business; an SEO industry term, not a Google term.
  • llms.txt: a proposed Markdown file that summarizes a site for AI tools; Google Search says it ignores it.
  • AI crawler: a bot that visits websites for an AI company, either for AI search answers or for model training.
  • LocalBusiness schema: the schema.org type, or a trade subtype such as Plumber, used in structured data to state a business's name, address, hours and contact details.
  • Backlink: a link on another website that points to yours; Google counts how many sites link to a business toward how well known it is.
  • Doorway page: a page made to rank for one of many similar searches and pass visitors on, such as near-identical town pages; Google's spam policies prohibit it.
  • Scaled content abuse: producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help people, whether by AI tools, people or both; a Google spam policy.
  • Canonical tag: a line of HTML that tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page; Google treats it as a hint, not a rule.
  • robots.txt: a file at the root of a site that tells crawlers, including AI crawlers, which URLs they may visit; it controls crawling, not indexing.
  • Core Web Vitals: Google's three measures of loading, responsiveness and visual stability (LCP, INP and CLS), judged on real visits.
  • Search intent: the goal behind a search, such as learning, comparing or hiring, which decides what kind of page fits it.
  • Topical authority: an SEO industry term for how thoroughly and credibly a site covers one subject; not a Google term or score.
05

Reviews and trust

  • Review gating: asking only the customers you expect to be happy for a review; Google's review policy prohibits selectively asking for positive reviews.
  • Google Verified: the badge Google gives Local Services Ads advertisers that complete its screening and verification.
  • Aggregate rating: the average of many ratings with a count, such as 4.8 stars from 212 reviews; Google won't show stars for a business's own reviews on its own site.
06

Licenses and credentials

  • Contractor license lookup: a licensing board's public search showing whether a contractor holds a license, its status and often its complaint history.
  • BBB accreditation: a paid BBB status for businesses that meet its eight Standards for Trust; separate from the A+ to F rating.
  • IICRC certification: a restoration and cleaning credential from a non-profit body; technicians certify by exam, and companies with a certified technician can become Certified Firms.
  • Manufacturer certification: a product maker's program for contractors who complete its training, often tied to warranties and a locator listing; not a license.
  • USDOT number: FMCSA's identifier for commercial motor carriers, required for interstate vehicles rated 10,001 pounds or more and by many states for in-state carriers.
07

Measuring your marketing

  • Cost per lead: what a marketing source costs divided by the leads it brings in; a chance at a job, not a job.
  • Call tracking: a separate phone number for each source that forwards to your main line and records where each call came from.
  • Conversion rate: the share of visits or clicks that end in a call, form or booking.
  • Lead attribution: deciding which marketing source gets the credit for a lead or a booked job.
  • LSA dispute: the old manual request to get a Local Services Ads lead charge credited back; Google now credits poor leads automatically.
  • Domain Authority: a 1 to 100 score from the SEO software company Moz that predicts how likely a site is to rank; Google has said it doesn't use it.
08

Where to go next

For the full picture, read the home-service SEO handbook, the Google Business Profile handbook, the Local Services Ads guide and What is AEO, GEO and AI SEO?. Our AI search guides cover ChatGPT (the OpenAI API with web search, in our research) and AI Overviews, and our guides to marketing a home-service business cover strategy, advertising, slow seasons and budgets, including how much to spend on marketing. All our guides are in the guides library, and our local SEO page explains how we put these pieces to work. For licenses and credentials, the checklist in what ChatGPT checks before recommending a contractor lists the records to get right in each trade.

09

Sources

Read October 28, 2026.

Added October 29, 2026 (read that day):

Added October 29, 2026, with the marketing-measurement terms (read that day):

Added November 1, 2026, with the website, credential and LSA terms (read that day):

Added November 1, 2026, with the technical and authority terms (read that day):

Want to see how these terms apply to your business? The free AI Visibility Review shows your map position for three core searches, your Google Business Profile gaps and what Google's AI and ChatGPT say for two searches, with the three fixes we'd make first.