Glossary
Naming, SEO & GEO glossary.
The terms we use in reports and the playbook, defined plainly — from “brand name” to “GEO.”
- Brand name
- A distinctive, coined or non-descriptive name (like Verdict or Stripe) that carries no built-in search demand. It is highly defensible and ownable, but it must earn its audience from zero.
- Keyword name
- A name built from the terms a market already searches for, so it can inherit existing demand and signal relevance. It ranks faster but is generic and harder to own or trademark.
- Search intent
- What a person is actually trying to do when they type a query — buy, learn, compare, or navigate. RankedName classifies intent so a name is judged on demand that can convert, not just raw volume.
- Search volume
- The number of times a term is searched in a given period, usually expressed as average monthly searches. It measures how much real demand sits behind a keyword or name.
- Competitive density
- A measure of how many strong, entrenched competitors already rank for a niche's core terms. High density means a name walks into a crowded market; low density signals an opening.
- Domain availability
- Whether the matching domain name can actually be registered, checked live against registries at report time. A name you cannot own is treated as a hard limit on its score.
- Content pillar
- A core topic broad enough to anchor a cluster of related pages, around which supporting content is organised. Pillars are the backbone of a site's topical authority.
- Content blueprint
- The plan of content pillars and supporting topics a site needs to rank, derived from the same search-demand data used to rank a name. Every RankedName report ships one.
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimization: the practice of structuring a site and its content to rank higher in search engines like Google for relevant queries.
- GEO
- Generative Engine Optimization: structuring content and entities so they are cited by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI overviews, rather than only ranking in classic search results.
- Verdict score
- RankedName's single 0–100 rating for a candidate name, combining five signals (demand, intent, competition, domain availability, and content pillars). 75–100 is defensible, 65–74 workable, and below 65 risky.
- SERP
- Search Engine Results Page: the page a search engine returns for a query, including organic links, ads, and features like snippets. Competitive density is read from who occupies a niche's SERPs.