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SEO Glossary - G

GA4

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google's analytics service. While undeniably a powerful service, it is not considered intuitive to use and is not as widely liked as Google Universal Analytics which it replaced.

Gated Content

Gated content is that which is not available on a website to users who are not logged in or content which requires detailed form filling to progress to the content. This means that Google cannot crawl and index the content.

Gateway Page

See Doorway Page.

Gemini

Gemini is Google’s competitor product to ChatGPT. Gemini is an AI Large Language Model chatbot. Formerly known as Bard.

Generative AI

See AI Generated Content.


Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free tool from Google that will monitor the web for any search term you give it and will email you updates as it finds new relevant content. Perfect for keeping an eye on topics, products, companies, etc that you are interested in.

Google API Documentation Leak

In May 2024 part of Google’s internal API documentation for parts of it’s search ranking algorithms was leaked online.

This leak provided a unique insight into many of the attributes and modules that make up parts of Google’s search ranking algorithms.

Google Autocomplete

See Autocomplete.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profiles are available to businesses which serve their customers in person either at a fixed premises or at the customers premises. For example, shops, restaurants, plumbers, electricians, etc.

A Google Business Profile allows your business to feature in local pack content like maps.

Google Discover

Google Discover is a feed of personalised web content that is based on what Google thinks are your interests. Google uses information it knows about you from searches it’s seen you do, both on Google and other services like Youtube and your activity on the web.

Originally only available via the Google App on iPhone or Android it is also now being trialed on the desktop version of Google.

Google Indexing API

The Google Indexing API lets you programmatically request that a page be added or removed from Google's Index. Making a request via this API usually gets very quick results and several tools have been created to use the Indexing API to expedite getting pages indexed.

However, Google's documentation says that the API should only be used for JobPosting or BroadcastEvent page types, so while people have used the API for other types of pages successfully it’s not completely clear if this is a loophole Google might close in the future.

Google Knowledge Graph

A database of entities developed by Google and the relationships between them, used by Google to move beyond just understanding keywords but also the underlying entities as well.

Google Knowledge Panel

A Google search results feature that pulls data from the Google Knowledge Graph when related to the current search query.

Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights is a tool provided by Google to enable you to get insights as to how any webpage performs in terms of Core Web Vitals and page speed. It gives recommendations on how to improve any issues it encounters.

Google Patent Applications

While Google tries to keep its cards very close to its chest as to how exactly its search ranking algorithms work they do record a lot of the research work that they do in patent applications. 

While not everything they patent will make it into live search algorithms, there is a lot that can be learned from reading Google’s patent applications.

Google Quality Raters

Google Quality Raters are people employed as contractors by Google to spend time reviewing web pages based on the steps outlined in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines.

Ratings given to webpages do not directly impact the ranking of the individual pages, but rather they are used to train machine learning models which are then used within Google's algorithms to rank websites.

There are many thousands of Google Quality Raters.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

The Google Quality Rater Guidelines are contained in a very detailed, publicly accessible, document. The guidelines detail how Google wants to classify pages from pure spam to very high quality along with examples of each.

The guidelines are used to train Google Quality Raters.

They should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in SEO to be able to understand what Google would like to see (and what it doesn’t want to see) in websites and webpages.

Google Reviews

Google Reviews are a core part of Local SEO. Businesses with a Google Business Profile can receive customer reviews directly in Google.

Good reviews will help your local rankings.

Google Sandbox

A much shared (but with little evidence) theory that new domains and websites are placed in a “sandbox” by Google and are unable to rank well for queries for a certain amount of time.

It is much more likely that the effect people blame on the sandbox is just a function of the sites being new and not yet established rather than any artificial dampening effect.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a set of free tools available to every website owner that help you provide information to Google about your site as well as see performance and troubleshooting information about how your site performs in terms of crawling, indexing and ranking.

Google Search Essentials

Google Search Essentials are Google's guidelines for how to make your website accessible and easy to index, what practices Google considers spam and what are best practices to get your site as much visibility as possible in Google.

Previously known as Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google Suggest

See Google Autocomplete.

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free service from Google that allows you to easily manage adding, updating and removing javascript tag code for services such as analytics and other third party services on your site. You just have to add the GTM code to every page on your site (usually by putting it in a header template that's used on every page) and then you can add third party scripts via the tag manager interface rather than having to edit your website directly again.

Google Update

A Google Update occurs whenever Google makes changes to their ranking algorithms. Some updates are significant enough for them to be announced such as Core Updates and Named Updates. Other smaller updates occur much more frequently. Google claims they make minor updates to their algorithms almost daily.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

The old name for Google Search Essentials.


Google Webmaster Tools

The old name for Google Search Console.

Googlebot

Googlebot is the name of Google's spider (also referred to as a crawler) software that visits, downloads and discovers new pages and updates to existing pages.

GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer)

A Generative Pre-trained Transformer is an AI model that is trained on a large data set. A GPT is a type of Large Language Model (LLM).

Grey Hat SEO

Grey Hat SEO tactics are those which straddle the boundary between Black Hat and White Hat. These tactics push the boundaries of Google's guidelines, often in the areas of plausible deniability.

Ghost Posting (Ghost Blogging)

A version of the Guest Blogging tactic, but instead of appearing as a guest writer and taking credit for the post you instead allow the site owner/author to take credit for the post you provide.

This is an evolution of the tactic as Google has begun to crack down on Guest Posting for followed links, as no guest author is mentioned it is harder to determine if the links in the posted article are paid for or not.

As it is still essentially Link Buying then it falls outside of Google’s Guidelines and could be penalised.

Guest Blogging (Guest Posting)

A link building tactic where a site owner (or employee of a site owner) will guest post content on a third party blog in return for a link back to their own site.

This was a tactic for a long time considered White/Grey Hat, but more recently Google has been advising against this unless any links are set as nofollow or sponsored. There have been cases of Google manually penalising websites who have used Guest Blogging for followed links.