The words you get sold on, defined plainly.

Answer engine optimization

AEO

Answer engine optimization is the work of becoming the company an AI assistant names when someone asks it who to hire, rather than ranking in a list of links.

Generative engine optimization

GEO

Generative engine optimization is the broader discipline of shaping how AI systems represent a business anywhere they describe it, with answer engine optimization as the layer that decides who gets named in a direct recommendation.

Speed to lead

Time to first touch

Speed to lead is the time between a homeowner submitting an inquiry and a business making real contact. It is measured from the submission, not from when the office opens.

Qualified appointment

A qualified appointment is a confirmed time with a homeowner who has passed a defined qualifier, chosen the slot themselves, and sits inside the service area the crews actually cover.

Pay per appointment

Pay per appointment is a pricing model where a contractor pays for booked, qualified appointments rather than for leads, clicks, or a monthly retainer.

Shared leads

Sold leads

Shared leads are contact records sold to several contractors at once, so every buyer competes for the same homeowner.

Exclusive leads

Exclusive leads are contact records sold to only one contractor, rather than shared among several buyers.

Local Services Ads

LSA · Google Guaranteed

Local Services Ads are Google's pay-per-lead placement above the search results, carrying a Google Guaranteed badge. Businesses pass a license and insurance check to run them.

Map pack

Local pack · Three pack

The map pack is the block of three local businesses shown with a map above the normal results on a location-based search.

Google Business Profile

GBP · Google My Business

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that controls how a business appears in Google Maps and the local results, covering categories, hours, service area, photos, and reviews.

Schema markup

Structured data · JSON-LD

Schema markup is code added to a web page that states facts about a business in a fixed, machine-readable format: legal name, trade, service area, reviews, and contact details.

Cost per booked job

Cost per booked job is total channel spend divided by the number of jobs actually signed from it, rather than by leads or appointments generated.

Show rate

Show rate is the percentage of booked appointments where the homeowner is actually there when the estimator arrives.

Database reactivation

Database reactivation is running campaigns against a contractor's existing CRM records, old quotes that never closed and past customers due for more work, rather than buying new traffic.

AI receptionist

Voice AI · AI answering service

An AI receptionist is a voice system that answers inbound inquiries at any hour, qualifies the caller against defined rules, and books an appointment without a person on the line.

AI Overviews

AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries Google places above traditional search results, answering the query directly on the results page.

Missed call text back

Missed call auto text · MCTB

Missed call text back is an automation that sends an SMS the moment a call goes unanswered, so the caller gets a reply instead of a voicemail box.

Cost per lead

CPL

Cost per lead is channel spend divided by the number of contact records it produced, regardless of whether any of them were reachable, qualified, or in the service area.

Close rate

Close rate is the percentage of quoted jobs that get signed. For a contractor it is usually measured from the in-home appointment rather than from the lead.

Average ticket

Average job size · Average contract value

Average ticket is the average signed contract value across jobs in a period. It sets the ceiling on what a contractor can afford to pay for an appointment.

Return on ad spend

ROAS

Return on ad spend is revenue attributed to advertising divided by the advertising cost, expressed as a ratio or multiple.

Customer acquisition cost

CAC

Customer acquisition cost is the total cost of winning one customer, including media, fees, and the sales effort, rather than media alone.

Call tracking

Call tracking assigns a unique phone number to each marketing source so inbound calls can be attributed to the campaign, ad, or page that produced them.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords are terms you tell an ad platform to exclude, so your ads do not appear for searches that share vocabulary with your service but not the intent.

NAP consistency

Name address phone consistency · Citation consistency

NAP consistency means a business's name, address, and phone number appear identically everywhere they are published, from the website to the Google Business Profile to third-party directories.

Review gating

Review gating is asking customers how satisfied they are first, then only inviting the happy ones to leave a public review. It is against Google's policies.

Domain authority

DA · Domain rating · DR

Domain authority is a third-party score estimating how likely a site is to rank. It is invented by SEO tool vendors and is not used by Google.

E-E-A-T

Experience Expertise Authoritativeness Trustworthiness

E-E-A-T is the framework in Google's search quality guidelines covering experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It describes what raters are told to look for, not a score a site receives.

City pages

Location pages · Service area pages

City pages are individual pages targeting a specific town or suburb a business serves, rather than one page listing every location.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed file at a site's root that gives AI systems a clean, structured summary of what the site contains. It does for AI what robots.txt does for crawlers.

Core Web Vitals

LCP · INP · CLS

Core Web Vitals are Google's measures of loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability: largest contentful paint, interaction to next paint, and cumulative layout shift.

Retargeting

Remarketing

Retargeting shows ads to people who already visited your website or engaged with your content, rather than to a cold audience.

Lookalike audience

Similar audience

A lookalike audience is one an ad platform builds by finding people who resemble a list you supply, such as past customers or high-value jobs.