Search Engine Glossary Information of the terms in search engines from search engine genie for letter A-Z

SEO GLOSSARY IN DETAIL

AdWords: AdWords is Google's most beneficial Cost per Click text advertising. Ad Words takes click through rate into consideration along with advertiser's bid to determine the ad's relative position within the paid search results. It also makes a notable difference from Overture's CPC model that is based on bid amount and nothing else. Google applies such geat importance to feature those paid search results that are more popular and thos which are more important and useful.
Alt tag: The alternate text is associated with a web page graphic and it gets displayed when the Internet user drifts the mouse over the graphic. Alt tags convey what the graphic is for or about and contain relevant keywords. Alt tags also make web pages more accessible. For example, a blind user may have a web browser that reads the text and alt tags on a page.
ASP: Active Server Pages (ASP) are proprietary programming language for building dynamic web sites. These are powerfully invented by Microsoft.
Anchor Text: Anchor text forms the link part of the text. It is prominently used by search engines mainly for the ranking factors.
Agent Name: Agent Name is the name of the browser/spider that is currently visiting a page. Spider is a robot sent out by search engines to index particular websites on the internet. When the indexing process is being done, it is called as 'being spidered'.
Algorithm: algorithm is a requirement a search engine applies for analyzing a website, its pages, and also other factors to determine appropriate ranking in search engines.

Banned: Banned happens when a search engine blocks a paricular site domain, thus blocking the site from appearing in its search results.
Blacklist: These lists are used to ban spammers from search engines. These lists of websites are considerd dangerous.
Backlink: This is a link given from one website to another.
Bid management tool: This tool is used o manage bids on PPC search engines such as Overture. This is a software or an ASP service.
Bidding: Bidding is inserting a bid price that one is willing to pay on a pay-per-click search engine as an advertiser . The highest bidded keyword acheives the top spot in the PPC search results.
Blog: Blog is a web journal which is otherwise called as a "weblog". entries are made on a regular or daily basis in a blog like an online diary. Some blogs have definite authors who disclose their names and some with anonymous authors who use a nickname.
Body copy: the visible text of a web page is called as body copy . body copy doesn't include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.
Bridge page: These are keyword specic pages made specially to rank well in search engines. It acts as an entry point through which visitors get in to the main content.
Bulk submission services: This is an ASP that submits many URLs to the search engines. Theses are usually discouraged.
Bot: Bot is often known as spider and is an abbreviation for robot. It is the software program that scans the web. Bots involve in multiple purposes. It indexes web pages for search engines and also harvests e-mail addresses for spammers.
Browser: this is a program, which allows a user to see the internet.

Cache: These are copies of web pages stored on an Internet user's hard drive or within a search engine's database. Because of cache web pages load so quickly when a user hits the Back button in their web browser. Google even allows Internet users to view the cached version of web pages in its index. This feature of Google makes it easy to identify cloaking.
Cgi-bin: These are virtual directories included in URLs. It acts as a spider that proves your page is dynamic.
Clickthrough rate: The number of times people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner ad is click through rate.
Cloaking: Cloaking is a technique in which the content presented to the spider is different from that of those that is presented to that of user’s browser. This method is often used as a trick for search engines to rank sites for a higher ranking.
Cold Fusion: This is a web scripting language mostly centered around database access. It has limited capabilities. Cold Fusion program files are saved on the web server with a .CFM file extension.
Conversion: Conversion is the process of changing a person who visits a site into a customer or at least taking that visitor a step closer to customer by convincing or attracting the visitor.
Conversion Rate: the rate at which visitors who visit a site get converted to customers or atleast are moved a step closer to customer acquisition is called Conversion rate.
Cookie: Cookies are unique identifiers that isolate the particulars of a visitor from others during a visit and subsequent visits. These are information placed on a visitor's computer by a server.
Cost Per Action: This is the price paid for a particular action like signing up for an e- newsletter, entering a contest, registering on the site, etc.
Cost Per Click: This is the price paid for a clickthrough to one’s landing page.
Cost Per Thousand: This is the price paid for a thousand impressions.
Crawler: A computer program that automatically gathers and classifies information on the net.
Cross linking: Cross linking is the process of different sites linking to each other.
Custom error page: This is a feature of most server softwares that replaces default error messages with ones you create.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheet. This is particularly used to manipulate and affect the design of a webpage.
CTA: Content Targeted Advertising. This is done for non-search engine websites which places PPC ads on content pages.
Copyright: Copyright gives the possession rights. It gives someone the exclusive authorship of something made and authored by them and also imposes punishment on those who infringe on this specific right.

Database-driven: database-driven web site means that the particular website is connected to a database and the content of that web page is based in part on information extracted from those databases.
Database-generated: When a web page is created dynamically from a database, it is called as database-generated web page. It will be in contrast with an HTML page which is static.
Deep submitting: Deep submitting is the process of submitting URLs of pages deep in a site to the search engines. Some search engine do not encourage deep because it unnecessarily clogs up their submission database.
Deep Linking: Deep linking makes the spiders find the pages quciker. It makes the job of search engines lesser, as deep linking happens to the content from the home page and it makes sure the spiders find the pages easier and fast.
Directory: A directory enables choosing the right category and composing key pharses rich description and ensure maximum visibility. They are grouped list of sites organized by topic.
Doorway page: Doorway is also known as a bridge page. It is always not an important part of the website, but for the purpose of driving traffic.
Dynamic Page: A dynamic page is a webpage which is flexible in changing content considering database information or user settings.
Dynamic IP Address: A dynamic IP Address is also flexible in nature. It is a temporary IP Address. It is an identification assigned to a node in an IP network.
Domain: Domain is the URL of a website. When a user types a URL into a web browser, the Domain Name Server translates the URL into an IP address which is then used to find the actual website requested by the user.
Duplicate Content: A content copied form other web pages to increase ranking with the help of more kewords is called as duplicate content. Some search engine like Google have a filter that looks for duplicate text and thereby pushing the duplicated content deep inside the results.

Ethical SEO: It is SEO executed emplying ethical methods of optimization without resorting to illegal activities that may cause a web site to get blacklisted by search engines.

FFA: Free For All. FFA enables linking in a particular page. This is commonly used to check your spam emails.
Flash: The technology of allowing a designer to embed interactive multimedia into web pages. Flash is often used for Flash intros, games, and animating navigation. Flash will not get indexed as Search engines can't read embedded content in Flash.
Filter: Filter is a software application that is used to filter out web pages that use spam for promotion of pages.
Flash intro: Flash intro is an animated intro created using Flash that usually annoy users. Search engines again cannot read the content embedded in Flash.
Frames: When web pages are divided in to multiple windows, each window is called as a frame. Each window or frame contains a separate page. When one window is scrolled, others can remain fixed for other purposes.
Frameset: Frameset is a web page that is made up of frames.
Fresh: This is actually a term used by Google uses to refer to home pages that frequently change.

Google: Google is the most popular search engine that indexes the greatest number of web pages. Google not only provide search engine results, but translation, news groups, news search, image search, paid ads, g mail etc.
Google AdWords: It is the pay per click service provided by Google.
Google Toolbar: Google toolbar is a free tool which becomes part of your browser toolbar. It’s most useful features are it’s PageRank display and it’s AutoFill function.
Google bombing: Google bombing happens when a group of sites join to link to an unflattering page about a company such that this page rises to the top of the search results in Google.
Googlebot: This is the spider or the crawler of Google which crawls web sites monthly. Googlebot will visit and index pages on a daily basis and mark that page in its search results as being fresh.
Google Dance: "Google dance" is a term made to refer to updating Goolge’s servers which takes place once a month.

Hallway page: Hallway page is a page that serves as an index to a group of pages that is intended for the search engine spiders to find. A site map acts as a hallway page.
Heading tag: Heading tag is an HTML tag that is often used to denote a page heading on a web page. Because of the importance of the text set off from the rest of the page, search engines pay special attention heading tag. It is also called as heading tag.
Hidden keywords: keywords placed in the HTML that are not visible by human visitors is called as hidden keywords.
Hits: Hits is a download of a file from a web server which do not correlate with the visits of the web page. Every graphic on a web page is considered as a hit.
HTML: Abbreviation is HyperText Markup Language. This is the programming language used to mark up web content. they display it in a formatted manner.
HTML Source: This is the unrendered programming code which can be accessed in Internet Explorer.
Hyperlink text: This is the underlined text that points or links to another web page. Some search engines like Google pays special attention to the text used in a hyperlink.
HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol - the important protocol used to communicate between web servers and web browsers.

Impression: Impression is the number of times an ad banner is seen by visitors on the web.
Inbound links: links that point to your site from other are called inbound links which will improve your site's PageRank.
Index: Index is the search engine's database in which it stores textual content from every web page visited by spiders.
Invisible Web: Vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by the search engines is called as invisible web.

JavaScripts: Non compiled programs written in the JavaScript programming language which run on the Internet user's computer. If content is embedded in a JavaScript, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed.

Key phrase (keyword phrase): A search phrase made up of keywords or phrases of two or more words is called as keyphrase.
Keyword: A word that a user uses to find relevant web page or web pages. If a keyword appears anywhere in the text of your web page, your page will appear in the search results.
Keyword density: the number of times or the density by which a particular keyword appears on a web page. The more times that a given word appears on your page , the more importance that word is assigned by the search engine.
Keyword popularity: The number of searches done by Internet users of a given keyword during a particular period of time.
Keyword prominence: The prominence of a given keyword in the HTML source code of a web page is the keyword prominence.
Keyword research: This is done to identify keyword popularity for relevant keywords for the purpose of identifying the best keywords to target for high and better search engine rankings.
Keyword-rich: When a given page or part of text is full of good keywords that helps for higher ranking of the page in search engines, it is called as keyword rich.
Keyword stuffing: stuffing a larger amount of keywords into the copy and the HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability of a given page is called as stuffing. It is done basically for the purpose of boosting the page's rankings in the search engines. This includes hiding keywords on the page, comment tags, etc.

Link exchange: A link exchange is the process of exchanging hyperlinks with a quality site that is some way or the other related to a company's product or service. Good link exchange processes can increase a company's PageRank and also the number of visitors who are targeted.
Landing page: This is the first page of a site. This is seen by an user when he has followed a link form another site. It can be a home page or a content page.
Links: text or graphics that, take the Internet user to another web page location when clicked is called links.
Link building: This is done with the intention of increasing the link popularity or PageRank of a site. This is done by requesting links from webmasters of other sites.
Link popularity: This plays a significant role in the visibility of the website. Link popularity is the measure of the quantity and quality of other websites that link to a particular site on the web.
Log file: A log file is a list of acions that have happened or occurred.

Machine-generated: Machine generated pages are those pages that are usually devoid of meaningful content.
Manual submitting: This is the way of submition done by hand rather than using an automated submission tool or service. Manual submitting is the more decent way to submit, and is less likely to land you in trouble with the search engines.
Meta description: Meta description is a meta tag hidden iside the HTML that explains the page's content. it is usually short. The meta description provides an opportunity to influence how your Web page is described in the search results.
Meta keywords: Meta keywords are those hidden in the HTML that lists keywords important to the page's content.
Meta tags: Meta-information is associated with a web page and placed in the HTML but not visible for the user. Two of the most well-known meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords which are mostly ignored by search engines.
Mouseover: Mouseover is a term used to show a text that appears when you hold the mouse pointer over a link which is active, or some command button.
Mirror Sites: Mirror sites are used to back up a prominent site. This is also used for load balancing at times.

Navigation bar (nav bar): A navigation bar is a web site's navigation icons. These are usually arranged in a row down the left hand side or along the top of the page.
Noframes tag: Noframes tag is an alternative non-framed HTML on a frameset page. These are very old non-frames capable web browsers and search engine spiders. If your site is framed, placing good keyword-rich text in noframes tags is good. But, a framed web site is not search engine friendly as long as it uses noframes tags.
Natural Links: natural links are links gained as a result of quality content that other websites find useful. Natural links are valued high among major search engines.

Off-page Elements: Elements that are not within the direct control of the web site developer is called as off page elements or factors. They play a bigger role in determining search engine ranking. Search engines are relying more and more on these elements when determining ranking because they are more defiant to spamming or abuse.
On-page Elements: On page elements are those within the direct control of the web site developer and these determine search engine ranking. Examples of on-page factors include META tags, page text, title tag text, site link structure etc.
One-way Links:: the type of links powerful in doing the link popularity are called one way links. These are not reciprocated links i.e. no link exists to the web site that is doing the linking.
Open Directory Project: Open Directory Project is also called DMOZ which is a very large directory run by volunteers. This is used by many websites on the internet.
Overture: The original leader in PPC Engines, now owned by Yahoo! Delivers PPC results to many search engines.
Optimization: This term refers to the process of modifying and marketing a website for higher rankings in search engine results.
Outbound Links: Outbound link is a link on your web page that links to another site.
Optimized content: this is the content which has great importance due to the amount and placement of relevant keywords and keyword phrases. Search engines rank sites with optimized content.

Pagejacking: This is the process of stealing web page content which ranks high, from another site and copying it on your site inorder to increase the page’s rank. Pagejacking is strongly discouraged by search engines.
PageRank: Google uses a weighted form of link popularity called PageRank™. This is a score assigned by Google to every web page using a special mathematical algorithms.
Paid inclusion: The method of paying a search engine to have your web pages included in that particular search engine's index page.
Paid placement: Inorder to show yor listing show up in the higher position, you pay search engines. These listings are usually called as sponsored listings.
Pay-per-click (PPC): a pay-for-performance pricing method were advertising is priced based on number of clickthroughs.
PDF: Adobe's Portable Document Format is a file format that gives the page as intended regardless of the computer used. PDF is use for for creating documents that will be printed and instead of HTML when the content creator wants direct control over the display of the document.
PHP: PHP is the most popular open source programming language for building dynamic web sites which can be used to write server-side programs that access databases.
Pop-under: An annoying pop-up that appears underneath the active web browser window.
Pop-up: A web page that displays within a new web browser window is called as Pop-up. Pop-ups are often used for promotions, ads, email newsletter, invitations, etc.
Pull-down list: Pull-down list is one which the user chooses from a list of items. This is usually displayed with the first item within a box.

Query: The word or words used by the user to search for a particular item in the search engine's search box. It is rather called as search term by search engines.

Ranking: Ranking is the process by which search engines display websites in such a way that the most important sites appear on the top.
Reciprocal Link: Reciprocal linking happens when two sites give links to each other.
Redirect: Redirect happens when the internet user is automatically taken to another web page address without him/her clicking for that page. Redirects are not encouraged by search engines.
Referrer: Referrer is the particular web page containing a link to your web page, that made your visitor land in your web page.
Relevance: Relevance or relevant page is the highest possibility of a given web page to be of use to a search engine user for a particular keyword search.
Render: format and stylize HTML source code into the final format for the visitor's screen. For example, text within tags will be made bold or italics.
Replica: Replica is a copy or representation of a dynamic web site or a group of web pages from a dynamic site, saved as static HTML files.
Resubmitting: The method of submitting your web page address to search engines after you've submitted the addresses. This also happens after the search engine has already included your site in its index. Search engines don't encourage resubmission as it simply clutters their queue with duplicate requests.
Robot: This is an automated program that automatically moves the Web's hypertext structure by taking a document back, and repeatedly retrieving all documents that are already referenced.
Robots.txt: Robots.txt is a text file that is used to control spiders that visit your website. This file grants access to certain folders, file types, and specific files depending on the robot accessing the site.
ROI: ROI or return on investment is the key measure to determine a site’s performance.

Search Engine: A web site that offers its visitors the ability to search the content of numerous web pages on the Internet. Search engines periodically explore all the pages of a website and add the text on those pages into a large database that users can then search. With a search engine, publishing web pages that incorporate relevant key phrases, prominently positioned in particular ways, is critical. Contrast this with directories, which don't siphon content out of the HTML of a site's constituent pages, but instead are comprised solely of site names and descriptions written or edited by human reviewers.
Search Engine Marketing(SEM): Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engines. Short for search engine marketing. This refers to a more encompassing search engine strategy which includes search engine optimization and use of PPC Engines to maximize ROI from search engines.
Search Engine Optimization(SEO): Strategies and tactics undertaken to improve web pages so they gain a higher ranking in the searchengines.
SERP: Short form search engine results page, SERPs are the actual results returned to the user based on their search query. The SERP is otherwise known as the Search Engines Results Page.This is the page that users see after typing their search query into an engine. Since conversion starts at the SERP,it is an important job of the search marketer to obtain strong call-to-action listings that entice the click.
Sandbox: Many SEO experts believe that Google 'sandboxes' new websites.Whenever it detects a new website,it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine,credible,long term site.It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).Likewise,if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands)in the number of links back to your site,it may sandbox them for a period.
Site Map: A single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site(and every page contains a text link back to the site map).Think of your site map as being at the center of a spider-web.
Search Engine Positioning(SEP): Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase a site's rankings in the search engines for particular keywords.
Search Term: A word that a user uses to find relevant web page or web pages. If a keyword appears anywhere in the text of your web page,your page will appear in the search results.
Session: An instance of an Internet user accessing your web site for a length of time, then leaving.During a user session any number of pages may be accessed.
Sniffer Script: A small program or script that detects which web browser software an Internet user is using and then serves up the particular browser-specific cascading style sheet to match. Sniffer scripts are also used to detect whether a user has the Macromedia Flash plug-in installed, and if so, a Flash version of the page is displayed.
Spam: Spam is an Internet term for unsolicited commercial email. This often puts people in trouble by false appeals.
Spamdexing: This is the process of manipulating a search engine's pages to increase the chance of a website being placed higher in the search engine's results.
Spamglish: Keyword-rich content which is often meaningless. Spamglish includes keyword repetition just to increase the page's position in the web page.
Spamming: Spamming refers to using different unethical tactics to achieve high search engine rankings. Such spamming tactics include bulk submitting spamglish. It will contain spamglish pages.
Spider: Spider is also known as a crawler or bot. Spiders are computers used by a search engine to periodically explore your web site.
Spider Trap: Spider trap is a loop that a spider may get caught when it explores a dynamic site. This happens when the URL of a site keeps changing and the spider finds it difficult to determine the page, say for exaample, and the home page, which has already ben indexed.
Splash Page: A home page devoid of content in a great part is called as Splah page. Splash pages make the user wait before they get to any meaningful content and also damage search engine rankings.
Static: Static means that the web page was not created dynamically from a database, but created and saved as a pure HTML file.
Stop Character: Certain characters confuse or stop search engines as to whether the page is a static or dynamic one for fear of spider traps. The characters include, ampersand (&), equals sign (=), and question mark (?).
Stop Word: Certain words, such as "the," "a", "an," "of," and "with," that are ignored by search engines because they are meaningless and common and they do not bother including them in their index, or database, of web page content. So, the stop words are not considered as if they are on your pages in the first place.
Streaming Media: Streaming video is the audio-visual content that is played as it is being downloaded. Thus, an Internet user does not have to wait for a video clip to download fully as it allows watching the clip as the footage downloads.
Submitting: Submitting means submitting a web page address to a search engine with an intention of search engine indexing it.
Supplement Pages: Supplement pages are pages which are indexed in google and exist only when searching for a particular thing. They are shown in the search result pages. These pages provide additional information about the particular search term.
Search Engine Friendly: A search engine friendly web site is one which has quality and meaningful content, that which is easy to navigate, and also which is easy for search engines to rank.
Scooter: The name of the AltaVista search engine's spider.
Slurp: The name of the spider used by Inktomi.

Title: The text contained between the start and end HTML tags of the same name. This text is associated with (but not displayed in) the web page containing these tags, and is displayed in a special position (usually at the top of the window) by the web browser.Title text is important because it normally forms the link to the page from the search engine listings, and because the search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing the page.
Title Tag: The text displayed in the blue bar at the very top of the browser window, above "Back," "Forward," "Refresh," "Print," etc. Although inconspicuous to the user, the title tag is the most important bit of text on a web page as far as the search engines are concerned. Search engines not only assign the words in the title tag more weight, they also typically display the title tag in the search results, making the title tag an important potential call-to-action as well.Thus,the wording of each page's title tag should be thought through carefully.
Traffic: Normally the users surf to our site and counted by the hits that terms knows as traffic.

URL: Used interchangeably with web address. Acronym stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URLs can specify the location of a web page, an email address, or a file on an FTP server, among other things.
Unique Visitors: A count of individual users who have accessed your web site. It should be noted that the "user session" metric does not yield an accurate unique visitor count, as multiple user sessions can be generated by one unique visitor.
User Session: An instance of an Internet user accessing your web site for a length of time, then leaving. During a user session any number of pages may be accessed. A user session is considered finished once an arbitrarily chosen period of inactivity - typically 30 minutes - is exceeded.
Unethical SEO: The opposite to Ethical SEO. It involves employing underhand or illegal activities to increase search engine ranking. They are many unethical seo practices including cloaking, gateway pages, keyword spamming.

Visibility: How well-placed your web site is in the search engines for relevant keyword searches.

Web Browser: Software installed on the Internet user's computer that allows him or her to view web pages. Popular web browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera.
Webmaster: A person responsible for the management of a particular website.
Word count: The number of words on a particular web page.
World Wide Web: The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.

XML: Short for extensible Markup Language, XML promises more efficient and organized delivery of data over the internet. XHTML is the XML version of HTML.
XML Feed: A form of paid inclusion where a search engine is "fed" information about pages via XML, rather than gathering that information through crawling actual pages.

Yahoo: One of the largest and most popular websites on the internet. Second most popular search engine after Google.
Yahoo Slurp: The name of the spider used by Yahoo.