Internet Glossary Terms

Internet Terms - Glossary - Definitions

Understanding basic Internet and SEO terms, definitions and glossary words is important. We work with our clients to ensure that they are fully aware of our processes, charts, graphs, and general marketing direction as it is relates to their websites.

Most Often Used Internet Words

This glossary of Search Engine Marketing and Internet terms is only intended to be representative of the primary words used within the search engine optimization industry. It is not intended to be a complete anthology of Search Engine Optimization Definitions. The following Internet words and phrases and their definitions are representative of many of the most used terms Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization personnel use on a daily basis. This collection was taken from numerous online sources. These words are common terms used in describing Internet technologies. They are often referred to as Internet Glossary or Internet Dictionary terms.

Adwords - A system to advertise on Google & partner sites on a CPC (cost per click) basis.
Algorithm - The sum of all factors that determine how a web page will rank in the search results pages of a search engine.
Alt text - The text that appears when you put your mouse on top of an image or a picture.
B2B - Business to business.
B2C - Business to consumer.
Back Link - A link from one website to another.
Bandwidth - The amount of data transferred from one server to another. Most hosting providers set limits on the amount of data transferred, or bandwidth.
Banner Burnout – Also called banner fatigue. This occurs when the consumer has seen the banner too often that they no longer notice it is there or that they no longer notice the content of the banner ad.
Blind Link - A link (either text or banner) that misleads the consumer. A common example is the "Choose your favorite color" banner.
Blind Traffic - Low quality traffic generated by misleading banners or misleading spam. Blind traffic by nature is not targeted traffic.
Blog - Online journal. The term BLOG comes from web log.
Boolean search - A search formed by joining simple terms with AND, OR and NOT for the purpose of limiting or qualifying the search. If you search information on salmon fishing in Alaska, and your search also brings back information on trout fishing and diving in Alaska, the Boolean search "salmon AND fishing AND Alaska NOT diving" can narrow your search focus.
BPS - Bits-Per-Second.
Bridge Page - Similar to "Doorway Page", this is a specifically designed entry point for a website.
Cache - A snapshot of a web page.
Click Popularity -A measure of the relevance of sites obtained by noting which sites are clicked on most and how much time users spend in each site.
Click Through - User action that requires clicking on a link in a search engine results page to visit an indexed site. Also refers to clicking on a web page, banner ad, or email message link.
Click-Tracking - The use of scripts in order to track inbound and outbound links.
Cloaking - The process by which your site can display different pages under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most search engines will penalize a site if they discover that it is using cloaking.
Clustering - In search engine search results pages, clustering is limiting each represented website to one or two listings.
Comment Tags - This HTML tag <!--comments --> is used to insert comments that won't be viewed by users into your pages. Some search engines read comment tags, which can include keyword text and descriptions. Comment tags are also used to hide java script code from non-compliant browsers.
Conversion Ratio - Of all visitors to your site, how many actually make a purchase? Divide total visitors by number of visitors who make a purchase, and you've got your conversion ratio.
Cost Per Click - An advertising deal in which the purchaser agrees to pay a set price for each click thru that results from the advertisement.
Counter - A program or script that counts hits/visits to a page.
CPA - Cost per Action. Where you pay for a specified action such as a purchase.
CPC - Cost per Click. With this you are charged for every click your link on someone's website receives.
CPL - Cost per Lead. Where you pay for a lead i.e. someone does something.
CPM - Cost per Thousand. What you pay for each 1000 impressions.
Crawler - A component of a search engine that roams the web, storing the URLs and indexing the keywords and text of each page encountered. Also referred to as a robot or spider.
Cross Linking - Multiple sites linking to each other.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets; Used to manipulate and easily manage the design of a website.
CTR - Click Through Rate; The ratio of impressions shown to the number of clicks.
Dead Link - A link that produces a 404 error, page not found.
Deep Link - The act of linking to a page (deep) within a website rather than linking to the main URL. Directories discourage the submission of deep links as a way to keep their indexes clean and organized.
Description - Descriptive text summarizing a web page and displayed with the page title and URL when the page appears as the result of a user query on a search engine or directory. Some search engines use the description in the description meta tag, others generate their own description from text on the page. Directories often use text provided at registration.
Directory - Searchable subject guide organized by topical subject or geographical region and consisting of websites that have been reviewed and compiled by human editors. Directories are often provided as a browsable alternative to the searchable indexes of search engines. Examples: Yahoo!, The Open Directory Project and Looksmart are some of the most popular directories on the Internet.
domain - The name given to the address of a website. domains are written in a hierarchical manner with lower-level domains referring to sub-sections of the base website. domains are available with a variety of extensions, the most popular of which are .com, .edu, .gov, and .org. domains are unique and must be registered and assigned to a web host to become effective.
Doorway Page - A specially created web page that is designed to rank highly on a particular search engine by utilizing the methods that are known to produce the best results on that engine. These pages are most often designed to be visible to a search engine spider, but to be hidden from a human visitor. Doorway pages are currently considered a recognized spam tactic and are banned by most of the major engines and directories.
Dynamic Content - Information in web pages that changes automatically, based on database or user information. Search engines will index dynamic content in the same way as static content unless the URL includes a question mark [?]. However, if the URL does include a question mark [?], many search engines will ignore the URL.
Dynamic web Pages - web content that is generated out of a database to create dynamic web pages.
Entry Page - The page by which a visitor enters your website.
Error Log File - A server log file which records errors encountered.
Exit Page - The page where a visitor exits your website.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions.
Filter Words - Words such as is, am, were, was, the, for, do, ETC, that search engines deem irrelevant for indexing purposes.
Frames - An HTML technique allowing website designers to display two or more pages in the same browser window. Many search engines do not index framed web pages properly - they only index the text present in the NOFRAMES tag. Unless a web page that uses frames contains relevant content in the NOFRAMES tag, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in those search engines.
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. In reference to the marketing technique of destroying confidence in your competitor's product or services.
Gateway Page - See Doorway Page
Google Bot - The crawlers that index pages into Google.
Heading tags - This HTML tag contains the headings or subtitles visible on a page. Your headings provide a summary of page content and ideally should contain strategic keywords to be read by search engine spiders.
Hidden Text - Content on a website that is coded in a manner that makes it invisible to human visitors, but readable by search engine spiders. This is done in order to artificially inflate the keyword density of a website without affecting the visual appearance of it. Hidden text is a recognized spam tactic and nearly all of the major search engines recognize and penalize sites that use this tactic.
Hit - An instance of a graphic or file being loaded on a webpage.
HTML - The scripting language used to define the content and appearance of a web page. Also Known As: Hypertext Markup Language.
Inbound Link - A link from another website to your website.
Index - The component of a search engine or directory used for data storage, update and retrieval (i.e., the database).
Information Retrieval - The study of systems for indexing, searching, and recalling data, particularly text or other unstructured forms.
IP Address - A unique number which identifies a computer or system.
IP Spoofing - An illegal process of faking an IP address.
JavaScript - A scripting language commonly used in web pages. Most search engines are unable to index these scripts properly.
Keyword - A word or phrase that is used in a search engine query. Optimizing a site entails researching the keyword or keyword phrases that users enter in order to find websites, and optimizing a website around those terms.
Keyword Density - Refers to a web page that contains relevant content to the topic at hand. Usually used to refer to the need to repeat keyword phrases within the body copy of a website. Search engine algorithms give higher ranking to a site that contains the keyword phrases that a user is searching for.
Keyword Frequency - Denotes how often a keyword appears in a page or in an area of a page. In general, higher the number of times a keyword appears in a page, higher its search engine ranking. However, repeating a keyword too often in a page can lead to that page being penalized for spamming.
Key Phrase Search - A search for documents containing an exact sentence or phrase specified by a user in a search engine text box.
Keyword Prominence - Denotes how close to the start of an area of a page that a keyword appears. In general, having the keyword closer to the start of an area will lead to an improvement in the search engine ranking of a page.
Keyword Research - The act of researching what particular words and phrases are used to search for websites. This is one of the most important aspects of SEO as it allows a webmaster to write the content of their site in a manner that will help them rank highly on these particular phrases.
Keyword Search - A search for documents containing one or more words specified by a user in a search engine text box.
Keyword Stuffing - Stuffing a page with numerous keywords for the sole purpose of confusing search engines.
Keyword Tag - A meta tag that allows the author to emphasize the importance of strategic words and phrases used within a web page. Some search engines respond to this information, others ignore it. Don't use quotes around keywords or key phrases.
Keyword Weight - Denotes the number of times a keyword appears in a page as a percentage of all the other words in the page. In general, higher the weight of a particular keyword in a page, higher will be the search engine ranking of the page for that keyword. However, repeating a keyword too often in order to increase its weight can cause the page to be penalized by the search engines.
Link Farm - A series of websites linking to each other in order to increase rankings.
Link Popularity - The act of a search engine counting the number of inbound links to a website. Many search engines now use this information as part of their ranking system. Link popularity is measured by a combination of factors that are designed to weigh the importance of each incoming link. Links from sites with high link popularity will have more weight in a search engine algorithm than links from unpopular sites. In addition, links from sites with complimentary content count as more than links from sites that have no relevance.
Log File - A file maintained on a server showing where all files accessed are stored. Log file analysis reveals the visitors to your site, where they came from, and which queries were used to access your site.
Manual Submission - The process of submitting websites or web pages to search engines and directories for inclusion in their databases using specific guidelines unique to each index.
Meta Description Tag - The tag present in the header of a web page that is used to provide a short description of the contents of the page. Some search engines will display the text present in the Meta Description Tag when the page appears in the results of a search. Including keywords in the Meta Description Tag can improve the search engine ranking of a page for those keywords. However, some search engines ignore the Meta Description Tag.
Meta Refresh Tag - The tag present in the header of a web page that is used to display a different page after a few seconds. If a page displays another page too soon, most search engines will either ignore the current page and index the second page or penalize the current page for spamming.
Meta Search Engine - A server that passes queries on to many search engines and directories, then summarizes the results. Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Metacrawler, Metafind and Metasearch are meta search engines.
Meta Tag - An HTML tag placed within the header area of code for a website. This information is visible only to spiders and does not appear as a visual part of the website. These tags were originally used be webmasters to provide information about the content of a website in order to assist search engines in indexing the content. Because these tags were so easy to abuse, few search engines still read the content within these tags.
Open Directory Project - A large directory of websites run by volunteers. Their database is used by many website across the Internet.
Optimization - The changes that are made to the content and code of a website in order to increase it's rankings in the results pages of search engines and directories. Examples: These changes may involve rewriting body copy, altering Title or Meta tags, removal of Frames or Flash content, and the seeking of incoming links.
Outbound Link - Linking from your website to another website.
Page Rank - The name given to Google's link popularity measuring system. PR is determined by measuring both the quantity and quality of incoming links to a website and is a major factor in the Google ranking algorithm.
Page Views - The number of times distinct pages of a website are served.
Pay Per Click Search Engine - A search engine that allows webmasters to purchase their positions within the search results based on the amount of money they are willing to pay for each click thru their site's listing receives.
PFI - Pay For Inclusion. This is where a site must pay to be listed in the natural search index.
Pop Under - A pop-up that loads under a page so that it is only viewable when the current page is closed.
Pop-Up - The opening of a new window above the previous window.
Portal Site - A full service website. Usually refers to any high traffic website that provides news, email, search, and some form of entertainment. Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL are portal sites.
Qualified Visitors - This term describes traffic that is produced by users that find a website by searching for a product of concept that is offered on that website. These visitors are thought to be more likely to interact with or purchase from your website and are therefore of higher quality than other visitors.
Query - A word, phrase or group of words characterizing the information a user seeks from search engines and directories. The search engine subsequently locates web pages to match the query.
Rate Card - A sheet with pricing information.
Reciprocal Link - An exchange where two sites agree to link to each other.
Referrer - The URL of the web page from which a visitor came, as indicated by a server's referrer log file. If a visitor comes directly from a search engine listing, the query used to find the page will usually be encoded in the referrer URL, making it possible to see which keywords are bringing in visitors.
Refresh Tag - A tag that defines when and to where a page will refresh.
Registration - The process of requesting a search engine or directory to index a new web page or website.
Relevance - A subjective measure of how well a document satisfies the user's information need. Ideally, your search tool should retrieve all of the documents relevant to your search. However, this is subjective and difficult to quantify.
Relevancy Algorithm - The method used by search engines and directories to match the keywords in a query with the content of all the web pages in their database so the web pages found can be suitably ranked in the query results. Each search engine and directory uses a different algorithm and frequently changes this formula to improve relevancy.
Re-submission - Repeating the search engine registration process one or more times for the same page or website. This is regarded with suspicion by search engines because it can be indicative of spamming techniques. Some search engines will de-list sites for repeated re-submission. Others limit the number of submissions of the same page in a 24-hour period. Occasional re-submission of changed pages is usually not a problem.
Robot - Any browser program that follows hypertext links and accesses web pages but is not directly under human control. Example: search engine spiders, the harvesting software programs that extract email addresses or other data from web pages.
Robots.txt - A text file present in the root directory of a site which is used to control which pages are indexed by a robot. Only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will follow the instructions contained in this file.
ROI - Return On Investment
Search Engine - A search engine is a searchable online database of Internet resources. It has several components: search engine software, spider software, an index (database), and a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking). The search engine software consists of a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages to match user queries. The spidering software constantly crawls the Internet collecting web page data for the index. The index is a database for storing the data. The relevancy algorithm determines how to rank queries. Examples of major search engines are Google, AOL, MSN and Lycos, etc.. Examples of major directories are Yahoo!, LookSmart and ODP.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - SEO and non-optimization methods of drawing traffic through search engines, including management of paid advertising listings on search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The changes that are made to the content and code of a website in order to increase its rankings in the results pages of search engines and directories. These changes may involve rewriting body copy, altering Title or Meta tags, removal of Frames or Flash content, and the seeking of incoming links.
Search Engine Placement - The practice of trying to ensure that a website obtains a high rank in the search engines. Also called search engine positioning, search engine optimization etc.
Search String - Search strings or terms are the words entered by users into a search engine or directory to locate needed information.
Search Term - A single word or group of words used in a search engine document query. It also refers to the strategic keywords used to optimize web page content.
SERP - The list of search results that are returned by a search engine or directory in response to a search query.
Server - A powerful computer that holds data to be shared over a network. Can be used to store critical data for retrieval. A server also acts the communications gateway between many computers connected to it, responding to requests for information from client computers. On the Internet, all web pages are held on servers. This includes search engine and directory data accessible from the Internet. Typically, the computers running the server software are dedicated to that purpose.
Spamdexing - The alteration or creation of a document with intent to deceive an electronic catalog or filing system. Any technique that increases the potential positioning of a site at the expense of the quality of the search engine's datbase is regarded as spamdexing, also referred to as spamming or spoofing.
Spamming - Using any search engine ranking technique which causes a degradation in the quality of the results produced by the search engines. Examples of spamming include excessive repetition of a keyword in a page, optimizing a page for a keyword that is unrelated to the contents of the site, using invisible text, etc. Most search engines will penalize a page that uses spamming. Also called spamdexing. In a different context, spamming is also used to mean the practice of sending unsolicited bulk email.
Spider - An automated program that follows links to visit websites on behalf of search engines or directories. Robots then process and index the code and content of a web page to be stored in the search engine's database.
SSI - Server Side Includes.
Static IP Address - An IP address that does not change each time the user logs onto the Internet. An example would be an AT & T Broadband IP. See Dynamic IP Address.
Stemming - Word variations. For example, if I entered the query "swim", a search engine that supports stemming might return results that include "swimming" or "swims".
Stop Word - A word that is ignored in a query because the word is so commonly used that it makes no contribution to relevancy. Examples are common net words such as computer and web, and general words like get, I, me, the, a, of, and etc.
Submission - Submitting a site to a search engine or directory.
Tag Line - The closing line of an advertisement. The tag line should include a memorable phrase that summarizes the product and/or brand's USP.
Testimonial Ad - An ad that uses the testimony of a product user.
Title Tag - An HTML tag with text describing a specific web page (but not visually displayed on the page). The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page and be constructed following specific guidelines. The title tag is important because it usually becomes the text link to the page found in search engine listings, and because search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages.
Traffic - The number of visitors to a web page or website. Refers to the number of visitors, hits, page accesses, etc., over a given time period. As a general term, it describes data traveling around the Internet.
Unique Visitor - A real visitor to a website (versus a visit by a search engine robot). web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is used to determine the number of real people who have visited a website. If someone visits twenty pages within your site, the server will count only one unique visitor and twenty page accesses (the page accesses are all associated with the same IP address).
URL - Universal Resource Locator. An address that can specify any Internet resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type of resource: http: for web pages, ftp: for file transfers or mailto: for email addresses.
USP - Unique Selling Proposition. Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point.
Virtual Server - A hosting account wherein several websites are hosted on the same server. web Ring - A group of sites which link to each other. These sites often place "Forward" and "Backward" links in the page footer for navigation between the sites.
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get.
Zone Pricing - A pricing strategy whereby a product is priced differently in various geographic locations. Used often when shipping costs are a major consideration.

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