Glossary
Website terms, in plain language.
The words you'll see in your Qawex report, explained in one or two sentences.
- HTTPS
- The secure version of a website address. It encrypts what passes between the visitor and your site.
- HSTS
- A header telling browsers to always use HTTPS for your site, even if someone types http://.
- Content-Security-Policy (CSP)
- A header listing which scripts and files your pages may load. It makes many common attacks harder.
- SPF
- A domain record listing which servers may send email for your domain.
- DKIM
- A digital signature added to your emails so receivers can check they really came from you.
- DMARC
- A domain record telling email services what to do with messages that fail SPF or DKIM checks.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- How long the main content of a page takes to appear.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- How much a page jumps around while it loads.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
- How quickly a page responds when someone taps or clicks.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's set of speed and stability measures: LCP, CLS and INP.
- Meta description
- A short summary of a page that search engines may show under its title.
- Canonical URL
- The main address of a page, used when the same content is reachable at several addresses.
- Sitemap.xml
- A file listing your pages so search engines can find them.
- Robots.txt
- A file telling crawlers which parts of your site they may read.
- Structured data (JSON-LD)
- Machine-readable details about your business, such as name, address and services.
- llms.txt
- An optional file giving AI tools a short summary of your website.
- AI crawler
- A bot such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot that reads websites for AI assistants.
- Alt text
- A short text description of an image, read by screen readers and search engines.