Local & International

A

• Apple Business Connect

  Apple Business Connect is Apple's free business-listing platform, launched in January 2023 to replace Apple Maps Connect. A verified listing controls how a business appears in Apple Maps, Spotlight Search, Siri suggestions, and Look Around. It's the Apple equivalent of Google Business Profile.

B

• Bing Places

  Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's free local-listing platform — the equivalent of Google Business Profile for the Bing ecosystem. A claimed listing drives appearance in Bing Maps, Bing Search local answers, and (partially) Copilot's local recommendations. Often overlooked; meaningful where Bing has share.

C

• ccTLD vs gTLD

  A ccTLD is a country-code top-level domain (.es, .de, .fr, .co.uk) and carries strong implicit geotargeting to that country. A gTLD is a generic top-level domain (.com, .net, .org, .io) and is global by default. The choice between them is one of the largest architectural decisions in international SEO.

G

• Geo-modified keyword

  A geo-modified keyword is a search query that explicitly includes a location ("plumber Madrid", "dentist near me", "best ramen Brooklyn"). These queries trigger local-intent ranking systems — the Local Pack, Maps results, and city-tagged organic listings — and behave differently from generic queries.

• Geotargeting

  Geotargeting is the practice of telling Google that a site or a section of it is intended for users in a specific country. The signals are layered: ccTLD (implicit), hreflang (page-level), server/IP location (weak), and Search Console country targeting (deprecated for top-level since 2022, now algorithmic).

• Google Business Profile (GBP)

  Google Business Profile (GBP) is Google's free listing product for businesses, renamed from Google My Business in November 2021. It controls how a business appears in Google Search, Maps, and the Local Pack. Verification of the profile is the prerequisite for any local visibility on Google.

H

• Hreflang

  Hreflang is an annotation that tells search engines which language or regional version of a page to serve to which user. It can be delivered via `<link>` tags, HTTP headers, or XML sitemaps. Bidirectional references are mandatory — each version must reference all the others.

L

• Language targeting

  Language targeting is hreflang configuration that addresses users by language alone — `en`, `es`, `de`, `fr` — without specifying a region. Use it when one language version serves all regions of that language. It's simpler than locale targeting and right when the content genuinely doesn't vary by country.

• Local citation

  A local citation is any web mention of a business's name, address, and phone (NAP), whether or not it includes a link. Citations live on directories like Yelp, BBB, Apple Maps, Yellow Pages, and industry-specific sites. They're the off-site backbone of local SEO — Google reads them as identity signals.

• Local landing page

  A local landing page is a dedicated page targeting a single location/service combination — "Plumbing in Móstoles", "Dentist Brooklyn Heights". It's the unit of multi-location SEO: NAP, hours, embedded map, location-specific content, schema markup, and reviews tied to that one location.

• Locale targeting

  Locale targeting is the practice of targeting a specific language + region combination — `en-US`, `en-GB`, `es-MX`, `es-ES`, `pt-BR`, `pt-PT`. It's the canonical unit [hreflang](/blog/hreflang) operates on and the right granularity when content varies by region within a language.

M

• Multi-location SEO

  Multi-location SEO is the practice of optimizing an organic and local presence for businesses with many physical locations — chains, franchises, multi-clinic providers, dealer networks. It covers site architecture, GBP management, content uniqueness, citation governance, and reporting at scale.

N

• NAP consistency (NAP)

  NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone — the three identity fields that must match across a business's Google Business Profile, website, and every citation on the web. Discrepancies (abbreviations, old phone numbers, suite formatting) degrade the trust signal Google uses to confirm a real business.

R

• Review schema

  Review schema refers to the schema.org `Review` and `AggregateRating` types that mark up customer ratings in structured data. They power the star-rating rich result in Google. Heavily restricted in September 2019 to limit "self-serving" abuse — businesses can't mark up reviews they wrote about themselves.

S

• Service-area business (SAB)

  A service-area business (SAB) serves customers at the customer's location rather than at a public storefront — plumbers, mobile mechanics, locksmiths, cleaning services. On Google Business Profile, an SAB declares service areas by city or postal code instead of inviting walk-ins, and the address is optionally hidden.