Glossary
Search API terms, defined once
The words this site uses about search APIs, each defined in under forty words so the definition can be quoted whole. Where a term has a page of its own, the term links to it.
- SERP
- Search Engine Results Page — the page Google returns for a query, including organic listings, ads, and features like knowledge panels and People Also Ask.
- Also written: search engine results page
- SERP API
- An API that returns a search engine results page as structured data. You send a query over HTTP and get organic results, images, news and shopping back as JSON, without running browsers or proxies yourself.
- Organic result
- A search result Google ranked on relevance rather than payment. Each one carries a position, title, URL, domain and snippet — the fields rank tracking and retrieval pipelines actually use.
- Also written: organic results, organic listing
- Credit
- Searlo's unit of billing. One successful search costs one credit; credits are bought once in packs and are not a subscription. 3,000 free credits come with a new account.
- Also written: credits
- Rate-limit tier
- The requests-per-second ceiling attached to an API key. The tier moves up automatically with the total credits purchased, so there is no plan to change.
- Also written: rate limit tier, rate limits
- TOON
- Token-Optimized Object Notation — Searlo's compact output format for language models. Abbreviated keys and no redundant fields make a response about 63% cheaper in tokens than the JSON equivalent.
- Also written: token-optimized object notation
- MCP
- Model Context Protocol — the open standard an AI assistant uses to call external tools. Searlo runs an MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and similar clients can search the web directly.
- Also written: model context protocol
- Rank tracking
- Recording where a domain appears in the results for a keyword, repeatedly over time, so a change in position can be seen and explained.
- Also written: rank tracker, position tracking
- RAG
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation — fetching real documents at question time and putting them in the model's context, so the answer is grounded in sources rather than in training data.
- Also written: retrieval augmented generation, retrieval-augmented generation
- Geotarget
- The place Google should pretend the search came from. Searlo takes it as a canonical location name or as a raw uule token, which is what changes local results and map packs.
- Also written: uule, location parameter
- Per-1,000 rate
- What 1,000 successful queries cost. It is the only figure that compares two SERP APIs honestly, because plans differ in shape. Searlo's headline rate is $0.30.
- Also written: per 1,000, cost per thousand