GlobalmetaGlossary
Digital Growth and AI Glossary
Clear one-sentence definitions, worked examples and FAQs for recurring terms across strategy, search visibility, AI systems and measurement.
Purpose
What is this glossary for?
In digital growth projects, the same word can mean different things to different teams. For marketing, a "conversion" may be a form submission; for sales, a signed contract; for engineering, a database record. This glossary was written to give the core concepts Globalmeta uses with its clients and within its own team a shared language.
Every term page follows the same structure: a quotable one-sentence definition, the core components of the concept, a general example scenario without brand names or figures, how it is measured or implemented, how it differs from the concept it is most often confused with, and a short set of frequently asked questions. The definitions are written to be easy to read for people as well as for search engines and AI assistants; every page is marked up with structured data and is also available as a Markdown version.
The terms are grouped under four headings: strategy concepts that shape the brand and the experience, concepts that determine visibility in search engines and AI answers, the building blocks of enterprise AI systems, and the measurement and performance concepts that steer budget decisions. The glossary is extended regularly, based on the questions we encounter in our work.
Terms
Strategy and experience
- 01Brand PositioningBrand positioning is the strategic framework that defines which value a brand stands for, for which audience, and why it is different from its competitors.
- 02Digital EcosystemA digital ecosystem is the structure in which a brand's website, content management, integrations, measurement and growth channels work together as one connected system.
- 03Information ArchitectureInformation architecture is the organisation of a site's content, page types, labels and navigation paths so that both people and search systems can understand them.
Terms
Search and AI visibility
- 04Structured DataStructured data is the markup layer that describes the information on a page in a machine-readable way, using the schema.org vocabulary and usually the JSON-LD format.
- 05Multilingual SEOMultilingual SEO is the search engine optimisation approach that ensures each language version of a site appears to the right audience at the right address.
- 06Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the discipline of optimising content so that it is selected as the source for direct answers in search engines and AI assistants.
- 07Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making sure a brand and its content are accurately mentioned and cited in answers generated by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
Terms
AI systems
- 08Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is an AI architecture in which a language model first retrieves relevant content from defined knowledge sources and then grounds its answer in that content.
- 09Model Context Protocol (MCP)Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol, announced by Anthropic in 2024, that gives AI applications a standard way to connect to external data sources, tools and business systems.
Terms
Measurement and performance
- 10Data LayerA data layer is the intermediate layer that passes a website's events and user interactions to analytics and advertising tools in a consistent, named structure.
- 11Attribution ModelAn attribution model is the set of rules that determines how the credit for a conversion is shared across the ads and channels a user interacted with on the way to that conversion.
- 12Performance MarketingPerformance marketing is a marketing approach that plans, measures and optimises advertising spend against measurable business outcomes such as sales, qualified leads and profit, rather than clicks or impressions.
- 13ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)ROAS (return on ad spend) is an advertising efficiency metric, calculated by dividing the revenue generated by ads by the ad spend, that shows how much revenue each unit of budget returns.
- 14Conversion Rate OptimisationConversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the share of visitors who take a desired action, such as buying, submitting a form or signing up, through research, hypotheses and testing.
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