Token
The unit an AI reads and writes in — roughly three quarters of a word. Models are priced and limited by tokens, which is why very long documents cost more and sometimes get truncated.
Related terms
Synthetic Content
Text, images or video produced by AI. Not penalised for being synthetic, but it is judged by the same standard as anything else — and thin AI-written pages fail that standard easily.
Neural Network
A system of simple connected units, loosely inspired by the brain, that learns patterns from examples rather than following rules somebody wrote. Nearly all modern AI is built on one.
Prompt Library
A saved set of prompts a team reuses so results stay consistent between people. The simplest way to stop everyone reinventing the same instructions badly.
Microdata
An older way of marking up facts, written as attributes on the HTML itself rather than in a separate block. Still understood, but JSON-LD is now the safer choice.
Chunking
Splitting a long page into smaller passages so an AI can retrieve just the relevant part. Pages with clear headings chunk cleanly; a single unbroken wall of text does not.
Entity
A distinct thing a search engine can recognise: a company, a person, a place, a product. Being understood as an entity, rather than as a string of characters, is what lets you be recommended by name.