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Glossary
The words behind website health, in plain English
What the terms in TideStat, Google Search Console and your developer's emails actually mean. 36 terms, A to Z.
A
- Accessibility (WCAG)
- How well people with disabilities can use a site: with a screen reader, a keyboard, magnified text or low vision. WCAG is the international standard sites are checked against. Read more
- AI visibility
- Whether AI assistants that search the web name a business when asked the questions its customers ask. Read more
- Alt text
- A short written description of an image, read out by screen readers and used by search engines to understand the picture.
- Average position
- In Google Search Console, where a site's link usually appeared in results. 1 is the top; it's an average across searches, so look at it per search. Read more
B
- Blacklist (blocklist)
- A list of domains or servers flagged for spam or malware, such as Google's unsafe-sites list or Spamhaus. Being on one can block visitors and email. Read more
C
- Canonical address
- The one address a page should be known by when several addresses show the same content. Set with a canonical tag so search engines don't treat the copies as duplicates.
- Click rate (CTR)
- Clicks divided by impressions: of the people who saw a link in Google, the share who clicked it. Read more
- Clicks
- In Google Search Console, the number of times someone clicked through to the site from Google search. Read more
- Content gap
- Searches a site could reasonably rank for but has no page about yet: ideas for new content. Read more
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's three measures of how a page feels to use: how fast the main content appears (LCP), how quickly it responds (INP) and how much it jumps around (CLS). Read more
- Crawl
- When a program follows a site's links and reads its pages, as search engines do. TideStat crawls up to 500 pages a site to find problems. Read more
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- A Core Web Vital: how much the page moves around while it loads, for example text jumping down when an image appears. Good is 0.1 or less. Read more
D
- DKIM
- DomainKeys Identified Mail: a digital signature added to each email, checked against a key in DNS, proving the message came from an approved sender. Read more
- DMARC
- A DNS record telling mail providers what to do with email that fails SPF and DKIM checks (deliver, send to spam or reject), and where to send reports. Read more
- DNS
- The internet's address book: records that say which server a domain's website and email live on, among other things.
- Domain expiry
- The date a domain name's registration runs out. If it isn't renewed, the website and email on it stop working. Read more
F
- Fix list
- TideStat's single list of every problem on every site, worst first, in plain words, with a rough time to fix each. Read more
G
- Growth plan
- In TideStat's Search Growth add-on, a 90-day plan built from a site's own Google figures, whose tasks are checked against the data every day. Read more
I
- Impressions
- In Google Search Console, the number of times a link to the site appeared in results someone saw. Read more
- Indexing
- Google adding a page to its index, the store of pages it can show in results. A page that isn't indexed can't appear in search. Read more
- IndexNow
- A way to tell Bing and other search engines straight away that a page has changed, so it is read again sooner. Read more
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
- A Core Web Vital: how quickly a page responds when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less. Read more
L
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- A Core Web Vital: how long until the main content, usually the biggest image or block of text, appears. Good is 2.5 seconds or less. Read more
- Lighthouse
- Google's tool that tests a page in a controlled browser and scores it for speed, accessibility and good practice. Used by PageSpeed Insights.
M
- Meta description
- A short summary of a page that search engines often show under its title in results. Without one, Google picks text from the page.
R
- Redirect
- An instruction that sends visitors and search engines from one address to another. Chains of several redirects slow pages down. Read more
- Robots.txt
- A file at the root of a site telling search engine crawlers which parts they may read. A mistake here can hide a whole site from Google.
S
- Search Console
- Google's free service showing how a site appears in Google search: clicks, impressions, positions, indexing problems and sitemaps. Read more
- Search Growth
- TideStat's add-on that adds the full Google search report, quick wins, a 90-day growth plan and before-and-after figures for each change. Read more
- Security certificate (SSL/TLS)
- The certificate that lets a site load over https and shows the padlock. It has an end date; an expired one makes browsers warn visitors away. Read more
- Sitemap
- A file listing the pages of a site, so search engines can find them. Usually at /sitemap.xml and submitted in Search Console.
- SPF
- Sender Policy Framework: a DNS record listing the servers allowed to send email for a domain. A domain must have only one. Read more
- Status page
- A public page showing whether a site is up and any recent incidents, to share with customers. Read more
- Structured data
- Hidden information in a page, in a standard format, that tells search engines facts such as a business's name, address, opening hours or prices. Read more
U
- Uptime
- The share of time a site is reachable and working, usually shown as a percentage over 30 days. Read more
W
- White-label
- Reports and pages that carry an agency's own logo and colours instead of the tool's. Read more
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