SEO glossary

How well a site is built for AI assistants and answer engines: pages that can be read without running scripts, clean markup, and which AI crawlers robots.txt lets in. Site Audit scores it from 0 to 100, next to site health. Site Audit

In a local rank heatmap, the business's rank averaged across every point of the grid where it was found. Local Rank Heatmap

Sites that link to a project's competitors and not to the project. They make a ready list of places worth asking for a link. Backlinks

Badgerfly's crawler. It reads a site's pages for an audit, identifies itself in its user agent and obeys robots.txt. About BadgerflyBot

Searches that include the business's name, against those that do not. Non-branded traffic is the part SEO can grow. Research

A result reused from an earlier identical search, so it used no tokens. Repeating the same search is usually cached.

A rank read from a live check on that day. One of the three sources Badgerfly marks on every day's position, with Estimated and Held. Position Tracker

A listing of a business on a directory or data site: its name, address and phone number. Consistent citations support local rankings. Local SEO

A 0 to 100 grade for how completely a draft or a live page covers what the ten pages ranking for its target keyword cover, split into term coverage, structure and length. Content

What an advertiser pays on average for a click on a keyword in search ads. In keyword research it is a sign of a keyword's commercial value. Research

A text file in Google's format listing links you want Google to ignore. Backlink Audit builds one from your decisions; you upload it to Google yourself. Backlink Audit

How serious an audit issue is. Errors hurt rankings or stop pages from being read, warnings are worth fixing, and notices are improvements. Site Audit

A rank worked out from Search Console data on a day between live checks, and labelled as an estimate. Position Tracker

Two kinds of page speed measurement. Field data is real visitor measurements over 28 days and can be missing for low-traffic pages; lab data is a simulated measurement, always available but less representative. Site Audit

An audit's issue list ordered by how many health points each problem costs, largest first, so the work starts with the fix that recovers the most. Site Audit

Whether a link passes authority (follow) or asks search engines not to count it (nofollow). Backlinks

The points across an area from which a local search is made in a heatmap scan. A larger grid covers more ground and takes longer. Local Rank Heatmap

A day with no new reading, so the last known position is carried forward and marked Held rather than shown as a fresh check. Position Tracker

A way to plan content: a hub is a main topic page, and spokes are the supporting pages under it, each built around its own primary keyword. Content

Two or more pages on the same site competing for the same search. The clearest sign is rotation: Google switching between the pages from day to day. The fix is to merge, redirect, point one at the other, or make them clearly different. Keyword Cannibalization

A 0 to 100 score for how hard it is to rank on page one for a keyword. In Badgerfly, under 30 is easy, 30 to 60 is medium, and 60 and over is hard. Research

A keyword at least one competitor ranks for where the project does not rank, or ranks far lower. Research

The top three businesses Google shows on the map for a local search. Local Rank Heatmap

A mention is an AI assistant naming the business in its answer. A citation is the assistant linking to the business's site as a source. AI Visibility

Short for name, address and phone number: the details a citation should show the same way on every directory. Citation Audit reports each directory as a match, a mismatch or not found. Local SEO

One location on a heatmap grid, showing the business's rank for a search made from there. Local Rank Heatmap

One business and its site in Badgerfly, with its profile and everything run for it. Dashboard

Who the business is: name, address, phone, category, service areas and competitors, plus former names and old addresses. Every module reads it instead of asking again. Dashboard

How many different sites link to a domain. It counts for more than the raw number of links. Research

What changes when a page is loaded in a browser rather than read as plain HTML. Content that only appears after scripts run may be missed by search engines and by AI assistants that read plain HTML. Site Audit

A file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which pages they may fetch. BadgerflyBot reads it before fetching a page and follows the group for BadgerflyBot, or the * group when there is none. About BadgerflyBot

What a searcher most likely wants: to learn (informational), to find a site (navigational), to compare (commercial) or to buy (transactional). Research

The special blocks Google shows for a search, such as an AI answer, a map pack or questions people also ask. Position Tracker

An overall technical score from 0 to 100, weighted by how serious each problem is across the pages an audit read. Site Audit

A Site Audit, Backlink Audit or Citation Audit on any site or business without making it a project: a prospect, a competitor or a one-off look. It costs the same as the same run for a project. Site Audit

The unit paid work in Badgerfly is priced in. Every paid action shows its token cost beside its button before it runs, and nothing paid starts without that button. A failed run is refunded, and reopening a result you already have uses none. Beta accounts get a monthly allowance of tokens at no cost.

A 0 to 100 risk score for a backlink. Higher means more likely to harm rankings. Backlink Audit

A rank-weighted score for a heatmap scan, shown as a percentage. Each grid point counts more the higher the business ranks there, and a point where it is outside the top 20 counts nothing. The scan reports separately how many points the business was found at, for example 50 of 81 points. Local Rank Heatmap

A click-weighted share across a tracker's keywords. The full score would mean every tracked keyword in first place, and a keyword outside the top 100 adds nothing. Position Tracker

Your Badgerfly account. It holds your projects, lists, trackers, audits and reports, and no other workspace can see them. For agencies and SEO teams