Dictionary of terms
Every word and label The Audit uses, in plain English. The ? beside a term anywhere in the product opens the same answer.
- AI crawler
- A bot that reads your pages for an AI company — some to train models, some to cite you in answers. Your robots.txt decides which get in. What is in the report →
- AI-coded
- Coded automatically by a language model. A machine judgement, not an editor's reading. How sure is a finding? →
- Analyzed
- Rules applied to your pages' HTML. Firm, though a rule can miss your site's own conventions. How sure is a finding? →
- Audit window
- The period of publishing the audit reads — normally the last 90 days. Long enough to see your rhythm, short enough to stay current. What is in the report →
- Business
- Where you stand against comparable outlets, from public estimates of their traffic. What is in the report →
- Byline
- The reporter's name, in the page's markup as well as on screen, so search engines and AI answers can credit the journalist. What is in the report →
- Clear
- No risks were found in that section. It does not mean there is nothing to gain there. Read your report →
- Confidence
- High, medium or low: how much evidence sits behind a finding, such as how many stories it rests on. How sure is a finding? →
- Estimated
- From a third-party model, such as public traffic estimates for other outlets. Good for direction, not exact numbers. How sure is a finding? →
- Framing
- How your newsroom builds stories — conflict, explanation, accountability — against a published codebook. Coded by a language model. What is in the report →
- Google News sitemap
- A list of your stories from the last two days, with titles and dates, that tells Google News what is new. Stale or untitled entries slow down discovery of today's stories. What is in the report →
- Held back
- A kind of finding kept out of reports until its method passes an accuracy test — for example stories filed under the wrong desk, or coverage gaps against competitors. How sure is a finding? →
- Limited
- A limited report: the audit finished, but part of the report is thin or missing — for example, fewer than 30 stories in the window. The report says what and why. Why a report says it is limited →
- Measured
- Observed directly — counted from your pages, your sitemap, your robots.txt or the files you uploaded. How sure is a finding? →
- On-page health
- Whether your article pages carry what search engines read — byline, dates, article markup, headline, images, links — checked story by story and desk by desk. What is in the report →
- Opportunity
- A finding where there is ground to gain, but nothing is broken. Read your report →
- Platform
- Where search and AI crawlers meet your pages. Mostly one-change fixes in your CMS that apply across the site. What is in the report →
- Pre-sale check
- Before you pay, we read your sitemap and a few of your own stories. If we cannot read your site well enough to audit it honestly, we refuse the sale. Why we refused to sell you an audit →
- Production
- Habits your journalists control — bylines, named sources, depth, internal links, dates — with the weakest desk named. What is in the report →
- Risk
- A finding that is costing you now and should be fixed. Read your report →
- Search Console upload
- A file you download from Google Search Console's Performance report and upload before you pay. It shows how Google actually sends you readers. Required. Buy an audit →
- Speed to the story
- How long after a topic peaked in search your stories went up, compared with other outlets on the same topics. What is in the report →
- Start here
- The moves most worth making, ranked across the report: risks before opportunities, then by how firmly each was measured. Read your report →
- Strength
- Something already working. Protect it when you change other things. Read your report →