Glossary
Every term, coined phrase, tool, and piece of in-group jargon used across the Green Grid Goblins mastermind calls and the CTR Geeks podcast appearances. Compiled directly from the call transcripts, not from outside sources.
Use the search box (top right) to jump to a term.
The Method
Who you are, what you do, where you do it The foundational rule. Every asset you publish must state the brand, the service, and the location. Mike calls it his first-ever speech and repeats it on nearly every call. In PAA writing it means getting all three into the first sentence of the answer, not the first paragraph.
PAA (People Also Ask) The question boxes in Google results, and by extension the atomic content unit of the entire method. One PAA becomes a blog post, a branded image, a GMB post, a long video, a vertical short, a podcast episode, and a social syndication run. Everything is titled with the exact PAA, no variations.
The Merlino Spell The name Mike's own trained knowledge bot gave the complete staged methodology. Every social links to the GMB post, the GMB post links to the blog post via the Learn More button, the blog post links to the city service page, and the whole chain is about one single service.
Cherry on top of the pie Mike's standing metaphor that CTR manipulation is the last ingredient, never the foundation. Build brand, content, entities, and schema first, then sprinkle CTR to accelerate.
The impressions tell Watching Search Console impressions appear for service keywords after branded traffic. Read as proof Google is testing your brand for those terms, and the green light to begin CTR work.
Impressions with no clicks The specific Search Console or GMB Insights pattern Mike targets for CTR, because impressions mean Google is already testing you for that term.
Full Maximus Running the complete play across every algorithm and channel at once, as opposed to the partial version most members start with.
Three algorithms The framing that ranking one client in Google means beating three separate systems: Google organic, Google Maps, and Local Service Ads. Each gets its own UTM tag and behaves differently.
KISS, keep it stupid simple Mike's repeated correction to members over-engineering the PAA process. His stated bar is that a two dollar an hour VA does these all day with no special SOP.
Ugly first Get the mind map or asset built and functional before making it look good.
Naked PAA vs geo PAA A PAA used exactly as Google shows it, versus the same question with a city appended. Naked ranks faster nationally, geo is what actually moves the map pack.
Mirror the GMB Keeping the website and the Business Profile in exact correspondence, nothing on one that is not on the other. The precondition Will Jones says most people skip before blaming GMB posts for not working.
Single variable test Running exactly one campaign or tactic at a time so you can attribute the movement. The basis of Mike's confidence, funded by roughly a year and a half of unprofitable testing at $100k to $150k. His rule: he needs to see something work five times before calling it real.
MVP SEO Credited to Ted. Do the minimum viable amount of work to get the result, then scale only if needed.
Bazookas to a knife fight Over-engineering a campaign, spending hundreds per new GMB when a fraction would rank it. The mistake that led Mike to his minimal-campaign approach.
Silver bullet (as an anti-pattern) The group's stock rebuttal. People treat CTR as the silver bullet, and Will Jones refuses to discuss CTR until on-page, mirroring, internal linking, entity work, and location pages are in place.
Test, test, test The CTR Geeks operating rule. Run it on your own property first, prove it yourself, never take a tool's or a guru's word.
Green hat Mike's rejection of the black hat / white hat split. Any attempt to influence rankings is manipulation, so the only real line is ethical versus unethical. Cloaking a Web 2.0 to your own landing page is fine, redirecting a tennis buyer to Viagra is not.
Ranking Signals and Theory
Branded traffic Real traffic sent using the brand name as the query or entry point. Always the first traffic Mike sends. Target is roughly 30 to 50 percent branded search share for a local business.
Referral traffic Traffic routed to the target through another property (social profile, press release, review site, backlink) rather than straight from Google, so the brand looks like it is being discovered everywhere.
Social referral traffic Clicks arriving from social platforms, treated as an independent ranking input. The signal that accidentally ranked roughly 12 of Mike's Shopify product pages at number 1 with no backlinks and no content.
Trickle trick Feeding referral traffic in gradually from many different sources per service, rather than blasting direct traffic at a listing.
Backlink visitor traffic Searching a keyword, landing on the press release or backlink page, locating the exact anchor text, clicking it through to the target URL, then continuing the session. Makes the link look used.
Fake user journeys The full multi-step session a bot performs (Twitter profile, last tweet, a review, the GMB listing, about the business, then call or website) instead of a single click.
Tiered CTR Sending clicks to the press release, GMB post, blog post, social post, and citations rather than only the website, since all of them link back and build brand authority.
Manipulated URL A specially constructed target URL CTR is run against so signals register without a click-through that would dirty Search Console data.
OQ and Q manipulation Manipulating both URL query parameters instead of just Q, so the crafted search URL encodes a full user journey (branded search then service search) rather than one isolated query.
Dirtying the data Polluting a client's Search Console or Analytics with fake impressions and clicks. The main objection agency and ad-spending clients raise against CTR.
Entity association / Service association Mike's coined name for what happens when you publish and syndicate PAA content tied to a service, and the associated service keyword lifts in the map pack even though you never touched the service page.
Entity bucket (entity picture bucket) The cluster of images and sources Google gathers around a keyword, where the same PAA-stamped image appears repeatedly from Facebook, Instagram, Patch, SoundCloud, and press sites, associating your brand with that query.
Entity pollution / disambiguation Off-topic words or claims that attach the wrong entities to a business, or confuse Google about what services it offers and where.
KP stacking Deliberately earning as many knowledge panels as possible, including very long-tail ones, on the theory that each panel issues a unique MREID tied back to your CID, making you the dominant answer.
MREID (said "MERID") The unique machine-readable entity ID Mike believes Google assigns per knowledge panel. The thing being accumulated by KP stacking.
KGMID Google's Knowledge Graph machine ID for an entity. Mike checks whether a business has one as a proxy for real entity status.
Featured snippet is a knowledge panel B Mike's claim, stated as new on the Oct 25 2024 call, that a featured snippet functions as a weaker class of knowledge panel and is worth stacking for the same reason.
Gold stars Mike's metaphor for each SERP feature Google awards you: a snippet, a knowledge panel, a generative AI answer. Collecting them across keywords proves authority. Harder niches pay more stars.
Sentiment Two uses. Literally, the green or red score from Google's NLP demo on review and content text (target all green). Theoretically, Mike's read of Google patent language about whether the searcher's query was satisfied and they stopped searching.
Semantic triples The patent concept of a subject, predicate, object statement, which Mike reinterprets as "they say three, I send three thousand," per service.
Intent behind the intent The real reason a searcher typed the query, as opposed to the literal words. Credited to Marty Marion and to Google's patents, tied to RankBrain. Mike now sees Google resolving it on the SERP itself with service refiners.
NavBoost The Google system, surfaced via the antitrust lawsuit, that uses click-through data to reorder organic results. Mike treats it as proof his method was right all along.
RankBrain The 2015 system Mike points to as the origin of intent-behind-intent matching, and therefore the reason engagement and CTR signals started mattering.
Pogo sticking A user bouncing back to the SERP from your page. Described as negative SEO you inflict on yourself, and the exact opposite of what a CTR operator wants.
HCU (helpful content update) The Google update Mike says wiped out affiliate and lead-gen sites with no branded anchor text, no press, and no real brand signals, while leaving real brands standing.
Embed is a backlink The group's rule that any embed you place (podcast player, map, video) counts as a link, so chase embeds on authority properties.
Perfect click A full-quality click generated by a real person on a real device: start at the SERP, go to the GMB asset, click call, look at directions. As opposed to a bot pinging a URL.
The testing window / testing phase The temporary trial ranking (position 7, 9, or 11) Google gives a freshly launched page. The group's highest-leverage moment to slam click traffic in so it sticks higher and longer.
Google dance The temporary up-and-down ranking wobble expected after link building. One explanation when rankings fall while you are sending views, alongside too much traffic or a recent core update.
Link echo Clint Butler's argument that link equity persists after you delete the linking page, giving you time to rebuild question pages on new URLs without a ranking drop.
Topical clusters The set of related entities and subtopics a site must cover and silo to be understood as the authority in a niche. Checked with Phrase after the content is drafted.
Topical slippage Ranking loss caused by a bloated site with loose interlinking and silos that leak into each other. The fix is pruning pages, not adding them.
Entity schema Structured data spiked onto a page alongside internal links, as the non-traffic half of a ranking push.
Entity SEO (the book) Dixon Jones's "Entity SEO: Moving from Strings to Things," the group's shared reference for moving from keyword targeting to being recognized as a thing. Paired with his software InLinks. Warning attached: do not touch InLinks or Cora until you actually understand entities and on-page.
Popping a knowledge panel Getting Google to display a knowledge panel for a brand or keyword. Treated as the practical marker that Google recognizes you as an entity.
Merlino referral traffic Mike's coined distinction. Not backlink referral traffic, but real humans arriving from social, forums, images, podcasts, and LLMs, which he argues converts higher than map traffic.
GAI The group's shorthand for Google's AI Overview result. Tracked as a yes/no column on the PAA qualification sheet alongside snippet and knowledge panel.
GMB and Maps
LLP (location landing page) The page a GMB links out to, and the real money page of the site. The homepage is "the business card" and should only rank for branded terms, because Google ranks pages, not websites.
Justification The extra line Maps shows under a listing (open Sunday, free estimates, 24 hour service, offers financing). Treated as a conversion lever to be fed by GMB posts. One roofing company credited five million dollars in extra sales to promoting financing this way.
Event post / offer post The only two GMB post types Mike deliberately targets, because they can be scheduled to stay live up to a year and the event post carries a durable knowledge graph signal. Never use update posts.
Proximity shrink / proximity battle The ongoing contraction of how far a listing ranks from its pin, which Mike attributes to Google pushing businesses toward Local Service Ads.
Broad vs keyword plus geo The group's tracking rule: track the broad service term as well as the geo-modified term, because broad is now the harder and more valuable target and most operators never check it.
Service keyword The revenue-bearing term (commercial roofing, repiping, emergency plumbing) that Mike says to target instead of the broad "geo plus main keyword" everyone chases.
Geo at the end of the PAA Appending the city to the PAA so the title states who you are, what you do, and where you do it in one line. This is what pulls MAP rankings rather than organic only.
Possum filter Google filtering out one of two same-category businesses sitting too close together. Common with personal injury lawyers, realtors, and dentists in shared buildings. Broken with brand, trust, authority, and prominence, not keywords.
Blacklisted GMB A listing that is not suspended but will not respond to any work because Google does not trust it. You only find out by working on it. Set that caveat with a client before taking money.
SAB (service area business) A GMB with a hidden address. Mike's position is that an SAB only tells Google two of the three things it needs, so get a real or virtual address even at suspension risk. The SEO Neo GMB Blast and heat map do not work on SABs.
The 15 review sandbox Mike's observation that most GMBs stay suppressed on the geogrid until they clear roughly 15 reviews. The threshold moved from 5 to 10 to 15 over the years.
Spam score (GMB) The internal quality score Mike believes each listing carries, which determines how badly an over-aggressive CTR push hurts and how fast it recovers.
Donor GMBs Spare listings used purely as test subjects, since you cannot run experiments on client assets.
CID The Google Maps listing identifier. All the stacked knowledge panels and entities are meant to point back to it. Note: on the CTR Geeks episode Mike, Brent, and William all confirmed they stopped sending traffic and links to the CID because it stopped working and can damage rankings.
ShareLink The GMB share URL, adopted as the replacement for the CID as a traffic destination. Placed under the NAP and used inside every video citation.
The GMB website (free Google-hosted site) The mini site inside the listing, called badly underused. Mike wants roughly 1,000 words, services, areas and zip codes covered, and hand-typed hyperlinks out to top citation profiles.
NAP / NAPW Name, address, phone, and Mike's preferred version that adds website. Required to be burned into every image alongside the logo and target keyword.
Your wall / the imaginary line The boundary of where a listing will realistically show in maps, and the review counts of competitors sitting inside it. Checked before ever choosing a new GMB address.
LoopNet play Sourcing a real, cheap commercial lease through LoopNet, or renting a spare mailbox from a building's mailbox bank, so a client gets a legitimate verifiable address for a new GMB.
DBA (doing business as) The roughly $50 a year local registration used to give each GMB location its own legal name, its own lease, and its own Stripe entity, so customers do not connect the brands.
Place ID Google Maps' other unique identifier for a listing, tested alongside the CID as a link and traffic target. Neo's wizard runs the first campaign to the CID then swaps to the Place ID on subsequent runs.
View larger map link (the long ugly URL) The Google Maps URL you get by embedding the listing and clicking "View larger map." It carries the CID and lat/long. Mike considers it more powerful than the short share link, and uses it as a press release outbound link.
Exact match GBP title A Business Profile named purely keyword plus geo, which permanently blocks a knowledge panel. The fix is adding a small brandable modifier (LTD, Co, Guys, Pros) while keeping the keywords.
Service pollution Stuffing the GMB services list with reworded duplicates or services outside the core trade, which suppresses the listing. Related to entity pollution.
Business card method A GMB video verification trick. Start filming at the street sign, then pan down to a business card showing logo, name, address, phone, and website so Google's OCR reads it. Raises approval rates.
EMD (exact match domain) A domain matching the service plus geo. Mike's live audit across Denver, San Antonio, Boston, Dallas, and LA found two of three map pack winners on EMDs regardless of review count.
Merchant Center products Getting a local client's products listed as real Google Merchant Center products and populating the GBP products section. Mike says the algorithm is starting to reference Merchant Center data even for local.
Orphan page A location or city page deliberately left unlinked from site navigation so it ranks on its own, instead of the homepage absorbing the query.
Locations hub page A single page listing all locations, used as the link target from a broad national PAA so relevance passes to every location at once.
Tier one / top tier one Any page that links to the specific service page you are trying to rank: a bought PBN link, guest post, press release, niche edit, or an SEO Neo cloud site post about that service. RD 100 is aimed at these, never at the money page.
Call tracking number trap Using a tracking number as the only NAP number in the wild is a suspension trigger. The fix: landline as primary, tracking number in the secondary field.
Geogrid Language
Green Grid Goblins (GGG) Mike Merlino's paid local-SEO mastermind, launched October 2024 at $1,000 down plus $200/month, second round at $1,250 plus $250/month, roughly 120 members. Named for turning geogrid pins from red to green. Deliberately plural: "it's us, a bunch of us."
Goblin / Green Grid Goblin A member of the mastermind. Mike is explicit that he is "a goblin, not the goblin," because he learned from goblins before him. "OG goblins" are the founding cohort.
Pin drop One cell of a geogrid. Movement is measured in how many pin drops a listing gains.
Red twenties A geogrid scan showing all twenties in red, meaning the listing does not rank anywhere in the grid.
Parking lot The outer or worst positions of a geogrid scan. "Not even ranking in the parking lot" means no visibility at all.
Map bump A measurable rise in Google Maps grid rankings after running the method.
Ash cheeks Mike's term for a GMB that is in terrible shape before you start.
Problem child A client, location, or GMB that will not move no matter what you do.
The dance / dancing Rankings oscillating during and after a link campaign. Expected behavior while a GMB Blast runs, and a reason not to track obsessively.
Green Grid Mondays The group's recurring Monday habit of posting green geogrid screenshots as proof.
Grid pop The moment a keyword flips from all red to visible on the geogrid.
Water rising in the building Mike's metaphor for map SEO. You keep pouring work in with no visible level change until the grid suddenly overflows into green, which is why people quit one month before it lands. He demonstrated it with a Brooklyn grid that flipped from one pin to full coverage in a week, backed by ten months of prior scans.
CTR Operations
Click farm A room of physical phones or devices, each with its own IP and account, worked by staff who perform searches, clicks, and views manually.
Phone farm The device-side version of the same setup, a bank of real phones used for CTR and YouTube watch time. Consensus in the group: phones are the most reliable CTR source, full stop. Bots sometimes work, physical device networks always work.
Rotator The hardware switch on a phone farm that flips every device's IP, clears user data, and restarts them so the next pass looks like a new set of users.
Farming / marinating accounts Aging Gmail or Reddit accounts for roughly three months with real activity so they gain enough authority to be used for clicks and views. Also called "warm and farm."
Fingerprinting The browser identity data Google reads: browser info, location, date details. Described as putting a face with the name for a browser. The three standard spoofs are canvas, general browser fingerprint, and WebGL. All easy to spoof, all easy to detect.
Geo-based proxies A fixed proxy in the business's own city that the whole team logs into the GMB through, so the account never sees a scattered login footprint. One Gmail per GMB.
Packet requests / pen testing an asset Firing hundreds of thousands of lightweight HTTP requests at a Google Maps URL, CID, or Place ID the way a load test hits a server. Chris Palmer reported roughly 600,000 requests in five minutes causing a three-day spike then a plummet. Refinement: it will not move a high-authority top-four ranker, but reliably pushes down anything outside the top four. Documented here because the group discussed it, not because Mike endorses it. His stated position is no negative SEO.
Hot linking Embedding GMB images and products on other properties, then driving traffic or requests at those hosted files.
Micro Workers The crowdsourcing site where you post a paid task and hire workers worldwide for pennies to perform real branded searches and clicks. Treated as the best place for a beginner to start. Roughly $27 a week for 10 to 15 keywords.
Search and Engage The specific Micro Workers job category under SEO and Web Traffic used for CTR jobs. The task shape is search plus engage plus click plus engage.
Max positions per day The Micro Workers throttle used to convert a big monthly job total into a controlled daily click drip.
Redo / review and redo Rejecting a micro worker's submission for missing the stated on-page time requirement, which forces them to repeat the task and effectively doubles the clicks for the same money.
The branded ladder The CTR volume sequence: branded only at 1 to 2 clicks a day, then branded plus keyword, then pure keyword around month three, scaling toward 10 to 20 percent of search volume. Never stop or scale down branded, because a real growing business gets more brand searches over time.
Auto suggest mining Typing a competitor's brand into Google across several geos and harvesting the autocomplete terms as the real branded query list to send traffic on. Branded is broader than the brand name: brand plus phone number, plus customer service, plus hiring, plus location.
ATB / Awesome Traffic Bot A CTR traffic tool in the group's stack, with the standing warning to watch that campaigns actually complete. Incomplete campaigns create pogo sticking, which Mike calls punching yourself in the face.
Traffic Predator The bulk bot from Traffic Bot Pro that opens thousands of Chromium browsers and never closes them. Chris Palmer's verdict: "the worst bot I've ever played with."
Indexing API hack Using Google's Indexing API with a custom script to force an immediate crawl of a new page or link. Acknowledged as against Google's guidelines. Broken by a November update, which is why Omega Indexer stopped performing.
SEO Neo and Link Building
SEO Neo The link building and GMB campaign automation platform the group standardized on, brought to Mike by James Slattery. Self-hosted on a VPS or a spare gaming PC. Replaced RankerX, Money Robot, and GSA in Mike's stack.
Content bucket The SEO Neo container holding articles, short descriptions, bios, images, videos, and embeds for one campaign. Mike's rule, which he called the nugget James refused to give away: one bucket per client PER SERVICE, never one broad brand bucket.
Account bucket / campaign folder The other two SEO Neo organization layers. One folder per client per location, with matching account buckets so the tool stops spawning new ones.
GMB Blast The SEO Neo wizard that fires a large batch of links at a GMB property. Highest-risk wizard. Run once then wait 10 to 14 days. Over-running it has tanked listings. Does not work for SABs.
GMB Sniper A second SEO Neo wizard run on an as-needed basis alongside the Blast.
Rank Your Brand A / B A chained two-part SEO Neo campaign where part A automatically triggers part B, changing the links between stages.
DAS (Domain Authority Stacking) An SEO Neo campaign type that automatically runs as four chained levels.
RD 100 An SEO Neo campaign that builds roughly 100 referring domains at a single URL, pointed at a top tier one property.
RD 100 ratio theory Elias's rule that every outbound link on a page requires 100 inbound links, so a page with three outbound links plus a map embed needs four RD 100 campaigns. Clint Butler openly disputes it, and says the real purpose of RD 100 is to stay indexed, not to rank: "if no one votes for me and I do not vote for myself, why should Google index me."
Chaining Linking SEO Neo campaigns so the next auto-starts when the previous finishes, indicated by the started versus finished status lights.
Short descriptions The SEO Neo field that is actually a short article, not a meta description. Needs a custom prompt with the business name in it.
Heat map (in Neo) Neo's grid rank tracker. Not used for reporting, but must be run before a wizard so the tool knows where the GMB actually ranks before aiming links.
Use already posted content The SEO Neo setting, default off, that decides whether content already published can be reused in another campaign.
Clouds / cloud sites Tier one properties built inside SEO Neo, or standalone one-page cloud sites, hosting a branded hub plus service-specific articles, then targeted with an RD 100.
Tier one web 2.0s The first layer of Neo-created properties (Tumblr, Weebly, WordPress.com and similar) that RD 100 campaigns point at.
L3 / lh3 Google user content URLs The image URLs you get by right-clicking a GMB photo while logged OUT. Logged in gives a different, unusable URL. These are what you paste into Neo's rich content field.
Money site The client's actual website, as distinct from tier one, tier two, and lower link properties.
Press release stacking A silo of press releases where each new release links back to the previous one, and the chain ultimately points at the service page or CID.
Google stack / G stack The interlinked set of Google properties (Google Business Site, Sheets, PDFs, Slides, Calendar, now Google Vids) built to mirror the real website page for page. Attributed to Marcus and Bradley.
IFTTT ring / syndication network A chained set of social and Web 2.0 accounts wired to an RSS feed so every new post syndicates automatically. Used to keep filling a G stack and to auto-trigger CTR on fresh content.
Video citations Videos published across the web carrying the same title and anchor, used both as citations and as the first hop in a traffic chain into the share link and GMB.
Trust signals Citations, data aggregator listings, social profiles, and podcast platform links that convince Google the business is legitimate. Mike's claim is social has overtaken citations in weight, evidenced by social profiles being editable inside the GBP backend while citations are not.
Data aggregators (said "data aggravators") The top-tier citation and business-data sources (Yelp, Bing, Apple, Foursquare, YP) that Google historically checked to confirm a business is real.
Parasite SEO Ranking on someone else's high-authority domain. Now being carried over into LLM sources.
Link juice The legacy SEO term for link value passed between pages, which Clint Butler explicitly wants eliminated from SEO vocabulary as unmeasurable.
Stealth Code The company behind SEO Neo, and the name of the Discord server where Neo users and Elias hold live help sessions.
Klinky A crawler used to get tier two links crawled after tier ones are indexed. Same ownership as Omega Indexer.
Tiering the posts Pushing links at your links so they get crawled. The fallback when direct indexing services stop working.
SAPE The link marketplace the group buys from, filtered by trust flow 50 plus, paid with a virtual credit card.
Trust flow 40 plus The link-quality bar used as a competitive target. Count how many trust-flow-40-or-better links the winner has, and that count is your number.
Niche edits Links inserted into existing, already-indexed, already-trafficked pages, bought from a private vendor. Mike quotes roughly $55 to $60 each in a batch of 10 to 15.
GSA The mass link blaster. Used in the CID test that fired roughly 20,000 low-quality blog comments at a donor asset's CID. Result was completely neutral, no movement up or down over six days.
Holly's News Network Holly Starks's network of Google News sites sold in per-day posting packages, used to power up money sites and G Stacks. Her separate embed network places YouTube embeds across a network so they surface in the SERPs.
Daisy chain The distribution pattern where every blog post links to a press release, which links to YouTube, which links back to the blog and the press release and then to Google News sites, and the whole chain is then powered up.
PR taxonomy Mike breaks press releases into three types: stacking PRs (chained into each other as a link structure), blog post PRs (everything built around boosting one blog post), and pure link-build PRs. Around $48 per release at his vendor, picked up by Benzinga and AP News. Three outbound links: branded anchor to the website, exact service keyword to the View Larger Map URL, and a third to the GMB post, podcast episode, video, or review.
Drive stack / advanced drive stack The Google Drive and Google Sites asset stack, the advanced version including PDFs, used as a ranking and traffic asset.
Wheel stack A linked property structure fed by an RSS feed, with 4G proxy traffic pushed through four or five of its posts.
RSS feed from the GMB Pulling the Business Profile's own feed onto the money asset. Taught in Will Jones's paid course, and on the group's list for formal single-variable documentation.
KML sitemap / location sitemap A dedicated sitemap of location and KML data used to expand a listing's effective proximity radius.
Mind maps (as link assets) BatchGeo, My Maps, Google Earth, and KML assets chained together. Written off by the industry, then talked about again, flagged as needing single-variable testing.
Donor asset / donor property A throwaway or non-client listing or site deliberately used as the guinea pig for a risky test, especially one expected to tank it.
Content and Asset Production
Answer-first snippet rule Never repeat the question in the first sentence. Answer it immediately, in a variation of the keyword rather than an exact match, and sneak in who you are, what you do, and where you do it.
Levels / parent (PAA depth) PAA scrapers nest questions in levels. The top four under a topic are the "parent" level and are the only ones you work first, because deeper levels drift off intent.
5 pillars Brian Kato's approach of defining the five categories that describe a business (for a roofer: 3-tab, asphalt shingle, tile, TPO) and rotating PAA coverage through them to keep signals fresh.
Cannibalization Writing a second article for a keyword you already rank for and competing against yourself. Check existing rankings before adding more PAAs on the same service.
Word cloud image A generated image containing every keyword variation and related entity for a single service, run through Google Vision, then used as the GMB or blog post image.
Image SEO (Merlino version) Baking the NAP, the target keyword, and the logo into the image itself, then distributing that same image across posts, services, social, Web 2.0s, guest posts, and citations.
Labels vs objects The two Google Vision outputs the group distinguishes. Labels come from the image content, objects are detected items, and they frequently disagree. Getting the label to match the target service is the goal.
One level up When Vision will not return the exact service, target the broader parent category instead (construction company rather than spray foam insulation).
Internal vs external GMB image URL The image URL you get logged into the GMB back end versus the public one. Treated as two separate linkable assets.
Amazon bucket An S3 bucket named for the brand and foldered by service, holding every branded image, so the bucket itself acts as a silo telling the who / what / where story.
Multi menu system Building a separate navigation menu per location so a visitor and crawler stay inside one city's silo. Shaun Mitchell's term for the result: "you're in the Dallas container, you're not leaving that container."
Master file document A single compiled file of all a brand's assets, created specifically to feed LLMs the version of the brand you want them to repeat.
Feeding / training the LLMs Deliberately supplying ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Manus, Perplexity, and NotebookLM with your brand's content so you get cited in generative answers. The same manipulation game moved to a new surface.
Footprint Any repeatable detectable pattern. A phone number reused across Gmail verifications, or every podcast in a niche using the same two NotebookLM voices.
Catch-all Gmail / the dot trick Using Gmail's dot-insensitivity to generate many addresses from one account. A longer base Gmail yields more variants. Gmails created on a mobile phone are more trusted than desktop-created ones.
Short videos block / pack The mobile SERP section pulling short-form video from TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook onto page one for commercial keywords. Mike's proof that social posting has direct search value.
Job application schema trick Wording a GMB event post as a hiring post so keyword-stuffed phrasing passes.
Tools
| Tool | What the group uses it for |
|---|---|
| SEO Neo | The link and GMB campaign automation layer |
| LowFruits | PAA extraction, clustering, weak spots, all-in-title checks. Buy credits, not a plan |
| SEO Minion | Scraping PAAs by depth level. Needs a Keywords Everywhere API key |
| Detailed SEO Extension | Free PAA extraction by level, plus titles, headings, links, images, schema |
| Google Vision demo | Seeing what Google actually reads from a GMB image |
| Google NLP demo | Sentiment scoring on review and content text |
| Pictory | Blog post URL to long-form video |
| InVideo AI | Vertical shorts from a one-line scene description plus the PAA |
| Opus Clips / CapCut Pro | Chopping long-form into short-form |
| NotebookLM | Blog URL to two-host podcast, study guide, briefing doc, timeline, FAQ |
| ElevenLabs / HeyGen | Voice and AI talking-head video |
| ZimmWriter | Bulk AI article writing outside Neo. Import with markdown off |
| OneUp (oneupapp.io) | Bulk social syndication. $300/mo unlimited tier |
| Podbean / SoundCloud | Podcast and audio syndication. Podbean over Buzzsprout because Buzzsprout deletes after 90 days and bans |
| Omega Indexer | Pushing unindexed pages and syndicated URLs into the index |
| GMB Crush / PLEPER / GMB Everywhere / Surfer Local | GMB competitor recon, categories, review data, post counts |
| Local Dominator / Zysta | Third-party geogrid rank trackers, trusted over Neo's built-in |
| CallRail / WhatConverts | Call tracking. Use the referrer field, not source. Auto-tag by service and location |
| SEO Gets | Search Console dashboard with query clustering and dated annotations |
| Microsoft Clarity | Free heatmaps and session recording |
| Matomo | Self-hosted analytics, used to cross-check GA4's sampled data |
| GS Location Changer | Chrome extension to spoof search location |
| Extensity | Chrome extension manager, because too many active extensions break SEO tools |
| Harpa.ai / Manus | Agentic AI that reads live pages. Harpa's "page aware" mode holds every visited page in one context |
| Perplexity | Source scraping for placement targets via the Sources tab |
| Miro | Mind mapping the UTM and link architecture |
| Canva | Templated branded images, magic eraser, background remover |
| Yext | Citation distribution and NAP lock-in. Roughly $21 to $27 per location per month agency-direct. Has a data connector to OpenAI |
| Advice Local | The other fast-propagation citation service |
| Local Brand Manager / Local Viking | Competitor audit reports and the compare-scans geogrid view. Local Viking is the older version, Local Brand Manager uses your own API keys |
| Bulk Media Downloader | Grabbing every image URL off a GMB listing at once |
| Bulk URL Opener | Opening a scraped list of URLs in bulk to verify them |
| Link Gopher | Extracting all links or domains from a page, used to reverse engineer Google stacks |
| Multilogin / AdsPower / Session Box / GhostBrowser | Anti-detect browsers for warming and running social and Reddit accounts on separate proxies |
| Claude (Desktop) | Gamified interactive dashboards, SOPs, client reporting, Projects per client / service / author persona. Connectors for Gmail, Calendar, Stripe, Fireflies, Drive |
| NotebookLM | The client brain. Feed sources, generate study guide, convert notes back to sources, mind map, two-host podcast |
| Perplexity Comet | Chromium-based AI browser wired to Gmail and Calendar. Mike says he uses it over Chrome |
| Veo 3 | Video generation, stitching 8 second clips together |
| Phrase | Checking topical cluster coverage after drafting |
| Link Whisper | Internal linking |
| Fireflies | Meeting transcription, has an MCP server for Claude Desktop |
CTR tool stack (named by Mike): Agency Assassin (beta tested 3 to 4 years, driving-directions feature added at his request), CTR Booster, Babylon, Kraken Viper, Awesome Traffic Bot, Epic Traffic Bot, plus two or three custom bots. Micro workers are the manual alternative.
PC90 The GMB Crush metric for how many posts a listing published in the last 90 days. Used to find a competitor's posting gap and out-post them.
Brand SERP Report Card Mike's self-built tool that scrapes pages one through three of a brand search, auto-categorizes each result by asset type (website, citation, social, news, wiki, forum, directory, image, video, audio, maps, PBN, web 2.0, niche edit, authority site, blog comment, stacks, cloud, docs), and records whether you have full, partial, or no control of it.
Autocomplete spy Mike's tool that captures Google autocomplete suggestions for a brand so you can track how many of the ten belong to you.
4G mobile proxies The required proxy type for CTR, because a mobile search reports the cell tower it pings rather than an IP lat/long. Residential proxies no longer perform.
Lat/long spoofing extension The Chrome extension that fakes location so a session appears to search from the target geo. Also how Mike verifies knowledge panels from another city.
QR code CTR / physical CTR Driving real-world QR scans into a link rotator to distribute geo-authentic traffic. Mike claims to have created it.
Signed-in Gmail CTR Mike's prediction for where CTR is heading: aged Google accounts with months of cookie and local history running as fake personas on servers, instead of logged-out sessions.
UTM and Tracking
UTM tag set Mike's naming convention for tracking each entry point separately: GMB, GMB KP for knowledge panel traffic, GMB maps, GMB LS for Local Services, plus organic and one per social profile. Keep them short so the URL stays clean.
UTM recon Inspecting a competitor's GMB website link. No UTM tag at all is read as a signal the marketer is unsophisticated and the listing is beatable.
Session source / medium view The GA4 setting change (Reports, Acquisition, Traffic Acquisition, swap the primary channel group dimension) that exposes the actual referral sources most people never look at.
Referrer type The CallRail filter that shows whether a call came from Instagram, YouTube, Google, or Bing. The correct field is referrer, not source.
Business and Operations
PDCA Plan, do, check, act. Presented as the layer above SOPs, because an SOP can break or run at reduced capacity and something has to catch the bottleneck. Paired with a separate QA person so nobody signs off on their own work.
JV / rev share / equity deal Partnering with a business owner for a cut of each job (Mike cites 30 percent on a painter's gross) rather than charging a retainer. His argument: it is the only structure that makes you actually care about the client's sale.
"The moment you're hired you're waiting to be fired, the churn rate is in between" Mike's coined line about agency retainers, which he said he wants to trademark.
Double R method The two best customer types: Referral and Repeat, with referral ranked first.
Pay per task Paying VAs per completed unit rather than hourly, which Mike says multiplies output once the process time is known.
Highest ROI plus enough volume The two-variable filter for choosing which service to attack. The most profitable service is worthless as a primary target if it only sells twice a year.
The sponsored-count read Counting ads on a SERP as a money indicator. Two ads means money, four ads means real money, no ads on a PAA means low commercial value.
Full stack agency Mike's survival prescription: an agency that also runs ads, paid media, PBNs, parasites, news sites, and AI chatbots, since maps alone is a depreciating asset.
White label maps ranking Mike's agency service where other agencies outsource the GMB algorithm work. Also his recommended entry path for newcomers: sell locally, white label the delivery.
Rank and rent Building and ranking a lead gen asset, then renting the leads. Expect such listings to eventually be suspended.
Local success manager Mike's proposed agency role: the local person who takes over face-to-face client relationships once a partner stops attending networking meetings.
No half cakes A phrase from a presentation by "Jim" at the Legit event: do not build a business that leaves you arriving home to half a birthday cake and a kid who waited. Used as the mastermind's reason-for-existing framing.
No negative SEO / do not snitch Mike's explicit ethical line. He confirms CTR can damage a competitor and refuses to do it, refuses to report listings, and tells people to outrank or respect.
"If you are an SEO, you are black hat" Mike's rejection of the white hat / black hat split, on the basis that any attempt to influence ranking is manipulation, so the only real line is malicious versus not.
Hijacking method Taking over other people's Google Business Profiles to create new listings. Mike refuses to touch it on principle.
Terry's method Building a separate custom navigation menu per location silo so an Arlington visitor only ever sees Arlington links, keeping silos from cross-linking.
CallRail custom tags Per-service call tags (roof inspection, metal roofing, repair) plus appointment booked, complaint, and positive review. Turns call tracking into the reporting narrative: "you got zero metal roofing calls before, you got four last month." Mike credits this for earning equity stakes and vendor list placements.
Recommended vendors list A large national account's approved supplier list. Mike frames getting a client onto one as the payoff of service-level ranking work.
The 4 R's Mike's bookmark and task triage board inside a Claude artifact: Review, Reviewing, Reviewed, Results.
Gamified interactive dashboard Mike's standard Claude prompt output. An HTML dashboard replacing spreadsheets, SOP documents, and GSC reports, used internally for VAs and externally for client reporting.
Brand entity document A master markdown or PDF file built by asking an LLM to research everything about a brand, then fed into every other LLM and into NotebookLM as the seed of that client's brain.
"Imperfect action beats perfect inaction" / "shoot then aim" Mike's operating stance on shipping work before it is polished.
Group Slang
Testing lab The board inside the mastermind community where members post what they want Mike to test, which he then votes on and runs.
Wins channel The community channel for posting ranking results, added specifically so social proof of other members' wins pressures non-implementers into acting.
Action taker zone Mike's framing of the mastermind. Members are expected to implement and report results or leave.
Super nug / nugget / nuggety nugs A high-value tactical tip. Mike hands out "super nug of the day" during calls, and "nuggety nugs" are the extra advanced tips so experienced members do not get bored.
Go Blair on it Coined live on the Feb 20 2025 call as the group's replacement for "go ham on it," after Blair Witkowski syndicated one post to 42 places.
Shish kebabs Mike's own coined exclamation of frustration, which he claims to have invented.
Fail points Shaun Mitchell's internal team term for the predictable places the PAA workflow breaks, mostly AI reintroducing errors and social account setup mistakes.
YOLO niche Mike's joke coinage after fumbling the acronym YMYL. Means the restricted medical and legal niches where you cannot make aggressive claims and snippets are therefore worth more.
Traffic whores Mike's label for the two massive question-and-answer traffic platforms he says everyone overlooks as referral sources: Quora and Reddit.
Trash monkeys Clint Butler's term for spammers mass-producing junk location pages and fake map listings.
Big Willie In-group slang for the top operator or the pro-grade option.
Uncle G Mike's nickname for Garrett, who builds the turbo subdomain network, a CTR clickbot, and mobile proxies.
Fuck You Friday Clint Butler's term for stopping work by three on a Friday.
"I'm just playing, but I'm saying" Mike's Biggie Smalls-borrowed framing device: the delivery is joking but the message is serious and has not changed in four years.
Adapt or die The closing stance on AI adoption inside agencies.
SEO boner Mike's term for the near-vertical spike on a YouTube or traffic analytics graph.
GMB Pros William Jones's paid group and course, where the methods only teased on the CTR Geeks livestream are actually taught.
CTR Geeks The group and weekly live show Mike Merlino and Brent Bowser created for CTR questions. Explicitly not a tool or a service, just the group.
Reddit Answers Reddit's AI answer layer that summarizes threads and links to the specific comment. A referral traffic target that bypasses Google entirely. If threads are locked, create your own brand community and post the exact PAA with geo as the title. Do not link out on a new community's first posts, let it sit a few weeks first.
Lineage
Mike credits everything he teaches back to Network Empire, OMG, Semantic Mastery, and Local Client Takeover, named specifically so members do not learn regurgitated versions from downstream sources. He names JP and Paul Truscott as his main teachers, and James Slattery (who passed in March 2025) as the person who brought him to SEO Neo.
See Also
- Call Archive - which call each term came from
- Workflows - the multi-step processes these terms describe
- SOPs - step-by-step procedures
- Quick Reference - fast-lookup tables