murattunalı.

Glossary.

Terms from web performance, accessibility and answer-engine optimisation — each with a one-sentence definition.

PAGES
40
CLUSTERS
04
WORDS
17,098
Accessibility 10 Answer engines 10 Performance 10 Multilingual 10
Four clusters; each with its pillar page at the centre and the spokes linked to it around. Filled squares mark the spokes whose page carries a working tool.
All40 Accessibility10 Answer engines10 Performance10 Multilingual10

40/40 pages

Accessibility

  1. Accessibility tree The accessibility tree is the structure a browser derives from a page and presents to assistive technology; it is the page a screen reader sees.
  2. Accessible name The accessible name is the name of an interface element as read by assistive technology, and it can differ from the text shown on screen.
  3. ARIA ARIA is a set of attributes used to convey role, state and property information to assistive technology where HTML cannot express it on its own. Accessible Rich Internet Applications
  4. Colour blindness Colour blindness is the inability to tell certain colours apart, and it affects a considerable share of the world’s population, men in particular.
  5. Focus trap A focus trap is when keyboard focus enters a region and cannot leave it again, and WCAG prohibits it explicitly at level A.
  6. Live region A live region is an area of a page whose changes a screen reader has to announce to the user.
  7. Relative luminance Relative luminance is the value expressing a colour’s perceived lightness between 0 and 1, and it is the basis of the contrast ratio calculation.
  8. Screen reader A screen reader is assistive technology that turns on-screen content into speech or braille output and lets the user navigate by keyboard.
  9. Semantic HTML Semantic HTML means choosing each element for its meaning rather than its appearance — a heading element for a heading, a button element for a button, a list element for a list.
  10. WCAG WCAG is the international standard published by the W3C that defines the accessibility of web content through testable success criteria. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Answer engines

  1. AEO AEO is the practice of getting content selected as the unit that answers a question directly. Answer Engine Optimization
  2. AI Overviews AI Overviews is the AI-generated summary Google shows above the search results page, synthesised from more than one source.
  3. Brand mention A brand mention is a brand’s name being named without a link, and in the era of answer engines it is a visibility signal independent of links.
  4. Citation A citation is an answer engine mentioning a source in the answer it produces, usually with a link to it.
  5. Crawl budget Crawl budget is the number of requests a search engine allocates to fetching from a site within a given period.
  6. Entity An entity means a distinct thing that search and answer engines recognise — a person, an organisation, a place, a product or a concept.
  7. GEO GEO is the work of increasing the likelihood that a site is chosen as a source in the answers generated by AI systems. Generative Engine Optimization
  8. IndexNow IndexNow is an open protocol that tells search engines immediately that a page has changed.
  9. JSON-LD JSON-LD is a structured data format that declares a page’s meaning in a machine-readable form without changing the page’s appearance at all. JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data
  10. Structured data Structured data is an additional layer that labels a page’s content with a standard vocabulary machines can understand.

Performance

  1. Cache header A cache header is the server response header that tells the browser how long a resource may be stored and how it is to be revalidated.
  2. CLS CLS measures how much content shifts unexpectedly while a page is loading or in use, and Google counts anything under 0.1 as good. Cumulative Layout Shift
  3. Compression Compression is the shrinking of text-based resources before they are sent from the server and their expansion in the browser.
  4. Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals is the collective name for the three metrics Google defined to measure a page’s real user experience.
  5. Critical rendering path The critical rendering path is the minimum sequence of steps a browser must complete before it can draw a page on screen.
  6. Field data Field data is the sum of performance measurements experienced by real users on real devices and real networks.
  7. INP INP is the time from a user interaction until the page responds visually, and Google counts anything under 200 milliseconds as good. Interaction to Next Paint
  8. LCP LCP is the paint time of the largest content element in a page’s visible area, and Google counts anything under 2.5 seconds as good. Largest Contentful Paint
  9. Reflow A reflow is the browser recomputing the positions and sizes of elements on a page after a change.
  10. TTFB TTFB is the time between the browser sending a request and receiving the first byte from the server. Time to First Byte

Multilingual

  1. Canonical address A canonical address is the markup declaring which page is the original when the same or very similar content is reachable from more than one address.
  2. Country domain A country domain is a two-letter top-level domain extension allocated to a particular country. ccTLD
  3. Font subset A font subset is a font file regenerated with only the characters that are needed.
  4. hreflang hreflang is the markup that declares a page’s different language and region versions to search engines.
  5. Language tag A language tag is the standard coding form that tells machines which language a text is in. BCP 47
  6. Locale A locale is the setting that defines a user’s language and region together and determines the formatting rules.
  7. Localisation Localisation is adapting content to the culture, habits and search language of a target market; it is a wider undertaking than translation. Localization
  8. Text expansion Text expansion is the same content being of different lengths in different languages, and the layout having to flex accordingly.
  9. Translation memory A translation memory is a database that stores previously translated sentences and suggests them when the same or a similar sentence comes up again.
  10. x-default x-default is a special hreflang value declaring the default page to show when no language version matches the user’s language.