Fair Use | This is the guideline to using copyrighted materials without permission. You can find the detailed exceptions for fair use in the Copyright code under section 107. |
Favicon | Icon that marks or identifies a URL. It is found on the URL tab in a web browser. |
Feed | Users subscribe to content and receive notifications when the content is updated. Feed can also be defined as the pay per click syndicated feeds that merchant use. |
Feed Reader | Users can subscribe to feed to receive update notifications. This software is used to notify them. |
FFA | FFA stands for Free For All. Anyone can add a link to a free for all page. These links have low to no value when it comes to search engine rankings. |
Filter | Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter / remove them out of the search results. |
Firefox | Free open source web browser. |
Flash | Websites use flash to create rich graphics and designs as well as interactions. Flash is a vector graphics-based animation software. |
Frames | Multiple smaller pages are displayed using a single display. This creates easier and consistent site navigation. However, it does complicates creating deep links to relevant content. |
Fresh Content | Unique content that engages users and makes them pay attention to your website. Recently published content. |
FTP | FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is the protocal used to transfer data between computers. |
Fuzzy Search | Searches the correct spelling of queries. |
GAP | GAP stands for Google Advertising Professional. Google uses this to qualify AdWords marketers as being proficient marketers. |
Gladwell, Malcolm | Writer for The New Yorker who wrote The Tipping Point, which deals with how little things can become big trends. |
Godin, Seth | Best selling author, blogger, and viral marketer who specializes in standing out in a crowded marketplace. |
Google | The world’s most popular search engine created by Standard students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. |
GoogleBot | Search engine spider for Google. |
Google Base | Google has created this free database filled with semantically structured information. |
Google Bombing | A specific website is ranked high when a certain phrase is searched by using a lot of keywords in the anchor text. |
Google Bowling | Lowering the rank of a competitor by pointing thousands of low trust low quality links to the website. |
Google Dance | The name of Google’s index updates. |
Google Keyword Tool | Google displays search results from Google News, Google Base and other google search services above orangic search results. |
Google OneBox | Webmasters use this program to index their website’s content. |
Google Sitemaps | Webmasters can tell Google and other search engines about the organization of their sites’ content by posting a sitemap file. |
Google Sitelinks | Google can deem some results more relevant than others. Hence, some links appear at the top of the search results as deep links to the relevant site. |
Google Supplemental Index | Google stores indexes for websites with lower trust scores in the supplemental index. A website that appears in this index will most likely have duplicate content, complex URL names or the site’s host is untrustworthy. |
Google Traffic Estimator | Tool used to estimate traffic so that bid prices can be determined. It estimates how many people will click on an ad based on a specific keyword or key phrase. |
Google Trends | This tool allows you to look at keyword trends. You can see how a keyword performs overtime. |
Google Webmaster Guidelines | Forever changing guidelines Google uses. A website can be penalized for not adhering to guideline’s specifications. |
Google Wallet | Google’s payment service that helps with conversion rates. Merchants can also use Google Wallet to gain a better understand of markets and keywords. |
Google Webmaster Tools | Google tools used to analyze traffic trends, geographic makeup of visitors, etc. The tools also help webmasters disavow links and respond to any penalty by requesting a manual review. |
Google Website Optimizer | Adwords advertisers can use this free multi variable testing platform to improve their conversion rates. |
Guestbook Spam | Search engines rank this type of low quality automated link very low. They do not trust it. |
Headings | The title or the subject of a section summarized in a few words. |
Headline | Search engine spiders can see a headline, but a human visitor does not. This is a popular SEO technique. |
Hidden Text | Unaffiliated expert citations are used in an algorithm to rank search results. |
Hilltop | Citations from topical authorities are used in an algorithm to rank relevancy scores. |
HITS | |
Hijacking | Tricking a search engine so it believes that your URL leads to another website. This can be done using meta refresh or 302 redirect. |
Home Page | Users and search engines can navigate your website using the navigational schemes found on the main page (home page) of your website. This page is responsible for displaying your brand front and center. |
.htaccess | Files can be password protected or redirected using this Apache directory-level configuration file. |
HTML | HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the language used to code websites pages. |
HTTP | HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP communicates between web browsers and servers. The hypertext is a transfer protocol that transfers data from the server location to an active user browser. |
Hubs | A central connection point for devices in a network. It is most commonly used to connect LAN segments. |
Hummingbird | Conversational search is improved by this Google’s search algorithm update. |
IDF | IDF stands for inverse Document Frequency. It is used to figure out a term’s position in a vector space model. |
Inbound Link | When you link another website from your site. |
Index | A search engines query. It collects and stores data from websites. The data is cataloged and used as search results. |
Internal Link | When a link takes you from one page of a site to another page on the same site. |
Information Architecture | Organizing, structuring, categorizing and designing content so it can be used in a meaningful way. |
Information Retrieval | The science of finding relevant information by sorting and searching through large data sets. |
Inktomi | The paid inclusion business model was implemented by Inktomi, a search engine owned by Yahoo since 2002. |
Internet | A network of TCP/IP connected computers. |
Internet Explorer | Microsoft’s web browser that has now been updated to Microsoft Edge after Firefox forced them to update the browser to be more competitive. |
Invisible Web | Search technology limitations, information architecture issues and copyright issues make parts of the worldwide web hard to access. This portion is called the invisible web. |
IP Address | IP Adress stands for Internet Protocol Address. This works like your internet connections mailing address. Every internet service provider gives a connection an IP address. A website or a server can have an unique IP address. However, most host use an IP address for multiple websites. |
ISP | ISP stands for Internet Service Providers. They are the companies that provide the on ramp to the internet. |
JavaScript | Client-side scripting language used to embedded dynamic features into a website. |
Keyword | A word or phrase associated with a certain mindset of searchers look for a specific or general item. |
Keyword Density | An obsolete measure of the relevancy of a keyword. It used to measure how often a keyword is used in a webpage’s content. |
Keyword Funnel | Some keywords are naturally linked. This could be from spelling errors, automated refinement or poor search relevancy. The keyword funnel is that relationship between related keywords. |
Keyword Not Provided | A way for Google to make it harder for SEO to use keywords. |
Keyword Research | Research to discover what keywords or keyword phrases will work for your SEO campaign. |
Keyword Research Tools | Tools to help with determining search trends, search volumes based on certain keywords, bid prices and page content from pages similar to yours. |
Keyword Stuffing | Keywords are used excessively in content. |
Kleinberg, Jon | Scientist who studied hubs and authorities search relevancy algorithms. |
Knowledge Graph | Third party information Google displays in extended format in search results. |
Landing Page | The page the users lands on when they click on an advertisement or link. |
Landing Page Quality Scores | Google’s measurement to filter out noisy ads in the Adwords Program. |
Link | A citation that connects one web document to another web document or another position. |
Link Baiting | Using links to target your audience via social media and bloggers. |
Link Building | Building high quality linkage data process by evaluating your website as authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy. |
Link Bursts | A website gets a sudden and rapid increase in the quantity of links directing to it. |
Link Churn | A site’s link loss rate. |
Link Equity | Using inbound link popularity and the authority of the sites to determine how strong a website is. |
Link Farm | When websites choose not to control linking to other sites. FFA pages are link farms. |
Log Files | You can find out how people find your website using log files. They are server files that show where most of your traffic is generated from. |
Link Hoarding | Keeping link popularity by not linking out to other sites or link to other site using JavaScript or redirects. |
Link Popularity | How many links direct people to a website. |
Link Reputation | The combination of your anchor text and link equity. |
Link Rot | A measurement of how many links on a website are broken. |
Link Velocity | A website accumulation rate for new inbound links. |
Live.com | Microsoft portal that was replaced by Bing. |
Long Tail | A large number of occurences that happen away from the head. Your marketing strategy has long term effects that goes beyond the initial campaign. |
Looksmart | Formally a directory service that is now a paid search provider and vertical content play. |
LSI | LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Mathematical search system that looks at language to find relevant results. Some results do not contain the keyword, but it has similar content to high quality pages with the keyword. Thus, it is put into the search results. |
Malda, Rob | Slashdot.org founder, a popular news forum that uses editorially driven technology. |
Manual Penalty | Google Webmaster Guidelines are not followed and a Google engineer penalizes the website. Manul penalties can last for years unless a person requests a review using Google Webmaster Tools once the guideline problems are addressed. |
Manual Review | Manual review process to catch spam and to help train automated relevancy algorithms to catch similar spam. Manual reviews may occur because a website is flagged because link growth patterns and abnormal usage data. |
Mechanical Turk | You can hire humans for easy tasks that computers cannot do. This is an Amazon.com program. |
Meme | “A unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” A viral idea, picture, video or story that brings awareness to an issue. |
Meta Description | Aa sentence or two description about the content of the page. |
Meta Keywords | Targeted keywords and keyword phrases are highlighted using a meta keywords tag. |
Meta Refresh | A browser refresh to another URL location via a meta tag |
Meta Search | A new result set that is comprised of top ranked results from multiple other search engines. |
Meta Tags | Another name for meta descriptions and meta keywords. |
Microsoft | Brand of computer software and owner of Windows operating system. |
Mindshare | A measure of how many people think of your brand or product when your category is on their mind. For example, how much do a person think of Coke when they think about soft drinks? |
Mirror Site | Content from one website is mirrored or duplicated on another website. |
Movable Type | You can host a blog on your website using this blogging software. |
MSN Search | Internet Explorers default search engine. |
Multi Dimensional Scaling | Latent semantic indexing of snapshots to create topical clusters to provide a more efficient ranking. |
MySpace | One of the first social media websites that focuses on discovering new music. Musicians can connect with fans and users can blog. |
Natural Language Processing | Search engines try to go beyond the keywords using algorithms to attempt to understand a user’s true intent when searching for a query. |
Navigation | Scheme to navigate website users. They use it to figure out where they are, where they have been, and how your website is mapped out. |
Navigation Search | Visiting a specific website or business based on a search query. |
Negative SEO | Trying to adversely influence a third-party site rank. |
Netscape | Social news site that used to have a web browser with the same name. |
Niche | A website’s theme. It is the topic or subject in which the website focuses on. |
Nofollow | A link is stopped from passing link authority. |
Ontology | An exhaustive conceptual domain schema. It focuses on the relationships the domain has. |
Open Source | Software that allows anyone to modify it. |
Opera | A web browser. |
Organic Search Results | The unpaid search results. |
Outbound Link | A link from one website directing someone to another external website. |
Overture | The company, under the name Goto, who began selling targeted searches on a pay per click basis. They are not branded as Yahoo Search Marketing. |
Overture Keyword Selector Tool | Yahoo! search statistics is used for this research tool for commercial searches. This tool also searches for singular and plural terms. |
Page, Larry | Co-founder of Google. |
PageRank | A logarithmic scale which estimates web documents importance using link equity. |
Paid Inclusion | Websites buy relevant exposure when they pass editorial quality guidelines. |
Panda Algorithm | A Google algorithm uses perceived quality to sort websites into buckets. |
Pay for Performance | Affiliated sales workers work on commission. They only get paid if a consumer performs a certain action. For example, if the action is to get an upsell, the worker gets paid for every upsell they get. |
Penalty | A punishment for spamming or neglecting guidelines to get a higher ranking. Penalties can be automated or manually given. |
Penguin Algorithm | Google algorithm that looks for unnatural link profiles. When one is found, the site is penalized. |
Personalization | Search engines such as Google will alter the search results to accommodate the user’s location, search history and recently viewed pages. For example, if you look for a restaurant, the search results will show you restaurants in your location. |
PHP | Web pages are rendered using this open source server side scripting language. Also, if you want to add interactivity to a webpage, PHP can help. |
Pigeon Update | An algorithmic update to local search results on Google which tied in more signals which have been associated with regular web search. |
Piracy Update | Search algorithm update Google performed to lower the rankings of sites with an excessive number of DMCA takedown requests. |
Poison Word | Words that poison a website, because they are associated with low quality content. Rankings are demoted because content contains poison words. |
PDF | PDF stands for Portable Document Format. Created by Adobe Systems a PDF is a universal file format lets a printable version of files be store and viewed. |
POGO Rate | User percentage based on the user’s action of clicking on a link from the search results only to quickly click back to the results. |
Portal | Any website that offers consumer services such as email, news, search and other content. |
PPC | PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is an advertising price model where the advertiser only pays when someone clicks the ad. |
Precision | A measure of how precise the search results are to the query. Precision is given in a percentage. |
Profit Elasticity | Using adjusting price, supply and other variables to measure the profit potential of different economic conditions. This measurement is used to create a different profit potential where the supply and demand curves interact. |
Proximity | How close words are to each other. Search engines measure this to help determine if a website is keyword stuffing. |
QDF | QDF stands for Query deserves freshness is an algorithmic signal that places priority over fresher, newer content than older content. Thus, search results will rank fresh content higher than older content. |
Quality Content | Natural linkworthy content. |
Quality Link | This is a measurement of a link’s quality. Link votes of trust are counted by search engines. Quality links will count more than a low quality link. |
Query | The actual words or string of words a user puts in the search box. |
Query Refinement | Chaging your query to get more accurate results. Some search engines provide suggestion to similar queries to give you more relevant information. |
Rankbrain | A relevancy algorithm signal used by Google to leverage user clickpath information that will improve less commonly searched for related search terms relevancy. |
Recall | Retrieval of a portion of relevant documents from all relevant documents. |
Reciprocal Links | Low quality link schemes whose goal is to create false authority through trading links or using three way link trades with other websites. |
Redirect | An alert for browsers and search engines that a URL has moved its location. 301 redirects are for permanent change of location and 302 redirects are used for a temporary change of location. |
Registrar | A company that specializes in the registration of domain names. |
Reinclusion | After a site has been peanlized for spamming, they can ask for a reinclusion to the search index. The severity of the infraction determines whether or not the site will be added back to the search index. |
Referrer | A website vistor’s source. It is the website or person who referred the user to the link. |
Relative Link | A link that works as a reference to show the relation of the current URL to the URL page the link goes to. Usually these are short links that are easy to remember. They do not contain numbers. Hijacking and canonicalization makes relative links less desirable. Most people prefer absolute links. For example, food.com/desserts is a relative link to food.com. |
Relevancy | A measure of how search results are actually useful to searchers |
Repeat Visits | Visitors of a website that returns to it. |
Reputation Management | Reinforcing your brand by ensuring search results display keywords related to your brand. Negative attention from hate sites rank highly so you have to make sure that your branded keywords rank higher in brand related queries. |
Resubmission | It is a program that is not worth consumers time. |
Retargeting | Advertising programs that uses people’s internet history to create ads based on what they viewed or put into a shopping cart on a website. For example, when you go to Facebook, you may see an ad for a tool that you researched online a few days ago. This is because they use retargeting to personalize ads. |
Reverse Index | A keywords index which stores files of matching documents that contain certain keywords. |
Robots.txt | This file can stop search engines from crawling your website files. The robots.txt file is placed at the root of a site. Some search engines will still list the URL as URL only listing. |
ROI | ROI stands for Return on Investment is a measure to see if you are getting the money you put in marketing back plus a profit. |
RSS | RSS can stand for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication. Peole can subscribe to a channel via RSS, because it feeds syndicated information to a feed reader or other software. |
Safari | A web browser owned by Apple. |
Salton, Gerard | Scientist crucial in the information retrieval field. |
Scumware | Intrusive software and programs which usually target ads and violate privacy. Most of the time, the owner is not aware this is happening. |
Search History | The data from your previous searches. Most search engines keep a log of people’s previous queries. |
Search Engine | A tool or device that uses a spider, index, relevancy algorithms and search results to help you find your query. |
SEM | SEM stands for search engine marketing. This is when you buy traffic for your website through paid search listings. |
SEO | SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is the art of earning traffic through unpaid and free listings by posting content that makes it easier for search engines to understand the language. |
SEO Copywriting | Making copy relevant to search queries by formatting and writing it to make the content appear relevant to a wide array of keywords. |
SERP | SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page of your query search results. |
Search Marketing | This is another name for SEM. This is when you market a website in search engines. |
Server | A computer that acts as a host to websites by feeding the sites files located on the server. |
Server Logs | Website traffic trends and source files hosted on servers. |
Singular Value Decomposition | Comparing document vectors to breakdown a large database. |
Siphoning | Spyware or cybersquatting is used to steal another websites traffic. |
Site Map | Your site navigation that helps guide search engines. |
Slashdot | A Rob Malda founded community news site that focuses on technology and other nerd related topics. |
Social Media | Websites which allow users to create their own content. The most popular social media sites are Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram. |
Spam | Email messages that are unsolicited |
Spamming | The act of creating and distributing unsolicited information and messages. |
Spider | Search engine crawlers who creates a search engine’s index by creeping through websites. |
Splash Page | Pages that are aesthetically pleasing but do not have any real value when it comes to content for search engines to index. |
Splog | Spam blog that generates content by stealing it from other websites or rewording articles. They are very low quality. |
Spyware | Software programs used to spy on people for consumer research and targeted ads. |
Squidoo | Seth Godin website about topical lenses. |
SSI | SSI stands for Server Side Includes which makes updating websites easier by calling portions of a page in from another page. |
Static Content | Content that rarely change or does not have dynamic programming language. For example, a webstite’s about page will rarely change. |
Stemming | Using the stem word to make sure results are relevant. For example, watching a movie query will also include results that have watch a movie in them. |
Stop Words | Common words that are removed from the query, because they do not impact the results. |
Sullivan, Danny | Founder and lead editor of SearchEngineWatch.com and SearchEngineLand.com. |
Submission | The act of presenting the information from your website to search engines. |
Supplemental Results | Lower rank documents in the search engine index. |
Taxonomy | Controlled vocabulary classification system used to place a hierarchy on topical subjects. |
Technorati | Popular stories and link relationships are tracked using this blog search engine. |
Teoma | Kleinberg’s concept of hubs and authorities at work to create a topical community based search engine. The best example of this is Ask.com |
Telnet | Internet network protocol that lets a remote compture gain access and log in to another computer. |
Term Frequency | The frequency of a term in a collection of documents. |
Term Vector Database | A weighted index of documents which aims to understand the topic of documents based on how similar they are to other documents, and then match the most relevant documents to a search query based on vector length and angle. |
Text Link Ads | Text links that work as formatted ads. |
Thesaurus | When you look up a query, search engines use a synonym directory to make the search results more accurate. |
Title | Contents of the document summed up in a title. |
Toolbar | Toolbars are a feature in web browsers that help search engines track usage data. Toolbars also help with blocking pop-up ads, filling in forms and spell checking. |
Top Heavy | Google algorithm who looks at the placement of ads on a page. It penalizes websites that have ads concentrated above the fold. |
Topic-Sensitive PageRank | Topic related PageRank scores are produced by computing PageRank based on topics. |
Trackback | A feature in most popular blogging software programs which automatically notifies you when another website mentions your site. |
The Tragedy of the Commons | Give up a few rights for security. Google applies this principle to advertising by finding ways to distribute ads that make it less annoying for the user. |
TrustRank | Search relevancy algorithm which places additional weighting on links from trusted seed websites that are controlled by major corporations, educational institutions, or governmental institutions. |
Typepad | Hosted blogging platform provided by SixApart, who also makes Movable Type. |
Unethical SEO | Unethical practices in SEO. Most SEO practices are either effective or ineffective. Most do not involve ethics. |
Update | Keeping an algorithm fresh with new content to make sure search results are relevant and accurate. |
URL | URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is a web documents unique web address. |
URL Rewrite | A technique to make URLs more unique and descriptive so that site indexing is easier. |
Usability | Ease of use of a website for users. Can the user perform an action with little difficulty? |
Usage Data | How much data is your website using? How much traffic is it garnering? Are there a high percentage of repeat visitors? How long do they stay on the site? These are all examples of usage data. |
Usenet | A search service which uses a collection of newsgroups to provide information about a particular subject. |
Vertical Search | A search that focuses on a specific segment of information and online content. |
Viral Marketing | Marketing techniques that are self propagating in nature. This usually includes email, word of mouth and blogging. |
Virtual Domain | Virtual server hosted website. |
Virtual Server | A server which allows multiple top level domains to be hosted from a single computer. |
Wales, Jimmy | Wikipedia’s co-founder |
Whois | The recorded owner of a domain. |
White Hat SEO | SEO campaigns that stick to the guidelines. |
Wiki | Collaborative editing is possible thanks to this software that allows anyone to edit information that is published via the software. |
Wikipedia | A free online encyclopedia comprised of information gathered using wiki software. |
Wordnet | Search engines understand word relationships using this lexical database of English words.. |
WordPress | Open source platform for blogging. Users can download the blogging program or use wordpress as a host. |
Wordtracker | Feature rich paid keyword research tool which collects data from a couple popular meta search engines, like Dogpile. |
Xenu Link Sleuth | Webmasters can audit their website by using this free software to find any broken internal or external links. This software can also be use to create a sitemap. |
XHTML | XHTML stands for Extensible HyperText Markup Languag. XML formatting is accomplished by this class of specifications that allows HTML to conform to XML. |
XML | XML stands for Extensible Markup Language that can be read by both humans and machines. It is used to make things simple, easier and more usable across the internet. |
Yahoo! | A portal and popular website which as the popular Yahoo! Directory as its foundation. |
Yahoo! Answers | A platform where users can ask or answer questions. |
Yahoo! Directory | Founded David Filo and Jerry Yang in 1994, this is one of the most popular directories in the world. |
Yahoo! Search Marketing | Yahoo!’s paid search platform acquired from Overture. |
Yahoo! Site Explorer | Explore Yahoo index to see what pages link to your website. |
YouTube | A popular website owned by Google where people can create their own video channels and upload videos. Youtube is also used to upload syndication content. |
Zeal | Non-commercial directory which was bought by Looksmart for $20 million, then abruptly shut down with little to no warning. |