RDFa
Another attribute-based markup standard for embedding machine-readable facts in a page. Less common on business websites than JSON-LD, and largely equivalent in what it can express.
Related terms
Answer Engine
An answer engine replies to a question with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews are all answer engines. The old question was “do we rank?”; the new one is “are we the answer?”
Semantic Search
Search that works on meaning rather than exact words, so a page can match a query it never literally contains. It is why writing naturally now beats repeating a keyword.
AI Search
Searching by asking a question in ordinary language and getting a written reply, rather than typing keywords and choosing from links. It changes what a website has to do: be readable and quotable by a machine, not just findable.
E-E-A-T
Google’s shorthand for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — the qualities its raters look for. Not a score you can see, but a decent description of what makes content worth surfacing.
Human-in-the-Loop
Keeping a person in the decision, either approving what the AI produced or handling the cases it flags. The usual sensible middle ground between doing everything by hand and trusting a machine completely.
Content Negotiation
When the same URL serves different formats depending on what the visitor asks for — HTML for a browser, Markdown for an assistant. It lets one address serve people and machines without either getting a compromise.