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Glossary of search
engine optimization terms
About
- human edited directory, mostly geared towards consumers;
inclusion depends on Guides who act as editors for
assorted categories
Ah-Ha
- search engine and provider of advertising solutions;
members of their program can have their listing appear
in results on Excite, Dogpile, and Verizon; paid inclusion
and free submissions offered
All
The Web
- search engine powered by FAST with an index of over
3 billion webpages; includes Boolean searches in its
queries; closest to Google in terms of index size;
paid inclusion and free submissions offered; owned
by Yahoo!
Alta
Vista - search engine; paid inclusion (two day
turnaround), trusted feed (CPC), and free submissions
(four to six weeks to be indexed) offered; owned by
Yahoo!
ALT tags -
defines the text to display for a graphic if the user
has graphics turned off in their browser; visible
when a cursor is placed over an image in Explorer,
or in the source code
AOL
Search - directory using DMOZ results enhanced
by Google
anchor text
- text on a webpage that is a link itself; some search
engines consider that text relevant for describing
the page being linked to
Ask
Jeeves - natural language search engine; see also
Teoma
ASP - active server pages; dynamic
pages which allow user interaction and database connectivity
for such applications as shopping carts, newsgroups
and discussion forums
Boolean search - a search allowing
the inclusion or exclusion of documents containing
certain words through the use of operators such as
"and," "not" and "or"
cloaking - delivering one version
of a page to one user, and a different version to
other users; it's purpose can be to provide custom
language delivery, achieve geo-targeted advertising,
or thwart page thieves from stealing ("code-jacking")
optimized pages; unethical marketers have also used
this strategy to spam search engines
comment
tags - HTML tags used to hide text from browsers;
some search engines ignore this text, but others index
it as if the comment tags were not there
cost per click (CPC) - a paid placement
method in which an advertiser will pay a specified
amount (often determined through bidding) for each
time that a web surfer clicks on an search engine
result or banner ad
crawler - see spider
Direct Hit - see Teoma
directory - organized website listings categorized
by human editors; different from search engines in
that there is a navigable structure and listings are
generally alphabetical rather than automated
DMOZ - see Open Directory Project
doorway page
- a webpage created specifically to place well in
search engine results, in theory serving as an alternative
entry point to one's site; also known as bridge pages,
gateway pages, entry pages, or portal pages
dynamic pages - automatically generated webpages
with content that will vary depending upon database
content or user input
entry page - see doorway
Excite - meta
search engine; compiles results from Google, FAST,
Ask Jeeves, Inktomi, About, Looksmart, DMOZ, Overture,
FindWhat, Sprinks, and others
FAST - search
technology behind AllTheWeb.com; purchased by Overture,
which was in turn bought out by Yahoo!
Flash - multimedia technology developed by Macromedia;
allows designers to create visually appealing, interactive
elements with relatively small file size, though Flash
is another design technique that does present problems
for SEO
frames - design technique for combining two or more
independent HTML documents within a single web browser
screen; loading times and site navigation can be improved
with frames, however, they do present problems with
search engine indexing, bookmarking pages, and deep
linking
gateway page - see doorway
Google - world's
most popular search engine, with an index of over
3 billion webpages; refreshes Web index about once
a month
Google Dance - term used to describe the shake-up
that occured when Google did monthly updates of their
index; it is now believed, however, that Google continuously
updates their index
Go To - see Overture
heading - pronounced text on a webpage, much like
the headings of articles in print; search engines
have been known to give more weight to keywords found
within heading tags
hits - request of a file from a server; very frequently
misused to mean page views or unique visitors; a request
for a page counts as a hit, but so does a request
for a graphic on that same page, meaning a user visiting
a page with ten separate navigation graphics will
count as 11 hits on the server
Hot Bot - formerly
a search engine with its own index, Hot Bot now offers
search results from Google, FAST, Inktomi, and Teoma
HTML - HyperText Markup Language; the main language
used to write webpages
HTTP - HyperText Transfer Protocol; the main protocol
used to communicate between web servers and web browsers
inbound link - a link to your site from another site;
they are counted as a measure of page popularity
index - the searchable catalog of documents maintained
by search engines and directories
Inktomi - search
syndication service providing information to numerous
sites; powers in part About, Hot Bot, Looksmart, MSN,
Overture, and others; free submission and paid inclusion
opportunities
iWon - portal offering
Google search engine results
Javascript - computer language which runs scripts
on the client-side to create interactive elements
within HTML pages; supported by both MS Internet Explorer
and Netscape, though not necessarily the same way
keywords - word which is part of a search query
keyword density - measurement
of the frequency and positioning of keywords on a
page; varies greatly between search engines depending
on what a spider considers to be a "word"and
which tags are supported; should be great enough so
that a keyword is recognized as more than incidental,
but low enough so that the page is not considered
to be part of a spamming effort
link exchange - see reciprocal linking
link popularity - a
measure of the quantity and quality of links to your
site; the quantity, in theory, adds impartiality to
the computation of results in that good sites will
naturally attract more links than poor ones; the quality
is determined by the source of the inbound link (a
major directory will carry more weight than an an
obscure personal home page)
link text - see anchor text
Looksmart
- web directory; claims to reach 77% of U.S. Internet
users through their search partners, which include
About.com, Alta Vista, Netscape Netcenter, InfoSpace
(Excite, Dogpile, MetaCrawler, WebCrawler), CNET's
Search.com, and others; formerly the most significant
source of MSN's search results, their relationship
will cease in January 2004
Lycos - portal
with search function powered by own index; free URL
submission and paid inclusion (3 day turnaround guaranteed)
available
machine names - an extension of your domain which
can be found at the same IP address; for example,
database-development.chicagointernet.com is a machine
name of the primary domain www.chicagointernet.com
meta search engine - search engine which compiles
its results by querying other search engines; dogpile.com,
metacrawler.com, mamma.com, and search.com are all
examples
META tags - metadata (data
that describes other data) in the HTML header of a
webpage, unseen to a site visitor; the most commonly
used forms are the description and keyword tags which
are used to suggest summary text and keyword themes,
respectively, to search engine spiders (which may
or may not ignore this information)
mirror sites - multiple copies of a website or webpage,
usually hosted on separate servers; registering these
sites with search engines is considered spamming as
it artificially inflates these pages' relevancy
MSN - portal with
search function powered in part by Looksmart (until
2004); most likely powered by internal Microsoft resources
thereafter
Netscape -
portal with search function which allows users to
access results from Google, Ask Jeeves, Looksmart,
Lycos, Overture, or the site's own index
Northern Light
- search engine geared towards business and research
users; now defunct as public Internet search engine,
but will possibly return someday
Open Directory Project
- the largest human directory on the Web, constructed
and maintained by volunteers from around the world;
after submitting a URL it can take two weeks to several
months for a site to be included, depending on editor
optimization - process of choosing keywords, then
making changes to a webpage for the purpose of improving
it's position in the SERPs when those keywords are
part of a query; may include alterations to the design,
navigation, headings, content, ALT tags, META tags,
or a number of other site elements
Overture -
world's largest provider of pay per performance search;
advertisers bid for placement in search results for
keywords relevant to their business; results are screened
for relevance then distributed to search partners
such as MSN, Yahoo!, and Lycos; they purchased Alta
Vista & FAST Web Search in 2003, then were bought
out by Yahoo!
page title - text that appears
at the top of a browser window; one of the most important
tags in the eyes of search engines, sometimes used
as the title of a page in the results; keywords used
in the page title are generally given more weight
pageviews - request to load a single HTML page; a
more accurate way of tracking visitor traffic than
page hits
PageRank - system for ranking
webpages utilized by Google, and the source of much
controversy in the SEO world; a measure of a page's
relevancy by looking at the number and importance
of the pages that link to it, and the number and importance
of pages that link to those pages, and so on; Google
detractors argue whether PageRank is actually a subjective
or objective measure
paid inclusion - paying
a search engine for a guarantee that a specific URL
will be included in their index; especially beneficial
for sites with frequently changing content, as most
paid inclusion programs will revisit a site every
two or three days
paid submission - paying a search engine or directory
for a (usually expedited) review of your site; acceptance
into their index is not guaranteed
PHP - script language and interpreter used primarily
on Linux web servers; an open source alternative to
ASP technology
portal - any site which serves
as a entry point to the Web or a niche topic; often
these sites offer a search engine or directory, e-mail,
stock quotes, news, shopping, and other customizable
options
PR - abbreviation for Google's PageRank
reciprocal linking - links
between two sites, usually created through an agreement
between the site owners
robot - browser program, not under human control,
which follows hypertext links to access webpages;
examples include search engine spiders and "harvesting"
programs which extract e-mail addresses and data from
websites
robots.txt file - text file
stored in the top level directory of a website to
deny access by robots to certain pages or sub-directories;
only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion
Standard will obey the commands in this file
search engine - software that indexes documents,
then provides matching results to queries; most commonly
used in reference to programs which index the Web,
though other types do exist
SEM - search engine marketing; see optimization
SEO - search engine optimization, or search engine
optimizer (refering to the person who does the optimization
work); see optimization
SERPs - search engine result pages
spamming - the sending of unsolicited bulk e-mail;
also can be a reference to any action with the intent
to deceive search engine spiders (i.e., unethical
alterations to a webpage or frequent URL submission),
sometimes called "spamdexing"
spider - search engine software
that scans documents by following links, then adds
them to an index
Subject-Specific Popularity - proprietary search
filter developed by Teoma; system of ranking a site
based on the number of same-subject pages that reference
it, not just general popularity
submitting (a site) - inviting a search engine spider
to visit your site by providing it with a URL
static pages - webpages which remain the same unless
changed by the webmaster, as opposed to dynamic pages
which are created by queries to a database
stop words - words which appear often in documents,
yet alone may contain little meaning, and thus are
often ignored in search engine queries; examples include
conjunctions, prepositions, and articles ("and,"
"to," and "a"), as well as general
words ("you," "on," and "I")
Teoma - search
engine (formerly known as Direct Hit) which uses Subject-Specific
Popularity to determine relevancy; offers paid inclusion
within seven days to a database which also powers
Ask Jeeves
title tag - see page title
trusted feed - paid inclusion program aimed at businesses
with large websites or sites with mostly dynamic pages,
giving them a great deal of control over how their
listing in the results appears; companies are able
to submit many URLs, each with its own custom titles,
keywords, and descriptions; service generally provided
on a CPC basis
unique visitor - real visitor to a site within a
specified time period, determined by examining IP
addresses; someone who navigates through 20 pages
of your site in a day will count as 20 page views,
but only 1 unique visitor because all the pages were
requested by the same IP address
URL - universal resource locator; the location of
a resource on the Internet, including the protocol
(i.e., http, ftp, telnet), domain name (or IP address),
and additional path information (file, folder, etc.)
Webcrawler
- formerly important search engine which now mirrors
Excite results
Yahoo! - portal
with search function powered by own directory and
third party search engines (mainly Google), as well
as one of the most popular sites on the Web; nonprofit
sites can be submitted to directory free of charge,
with expedited review (seven business days) also available
for $299 (required for commercial sites); now owns
Inktomi and Overture
Zeal - directory
owned by Looksmart; community driven in that Internet
enthusiasts from around the world (who must first
pass a proficiency test) help professional editors
compile the sites that are accepted; listings will
appear in results on queries made at Looksmart, MSN,
Excite@Home, Alta Vista, media companies such as Time
Warner, and more than 370 Internet service providers
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