Glossary

I put this glossary together because every person I speak to about SEO has questions about what some of these SEO buzzwords mean. So, in order to make it easier for them, I decided to create a comprehensive glossary. In fact, I’ve created the largest SEO glossary on the web. A

Term	Definition
200 Success Response	SEO status response code that means OK. The request will be successfully loaded.
301 Redirect	SEO status response code that means the file that used to be available at one location has been permanently moved to a new URL.
302 Temporary Redirect	This SEO status response code is given when a file has been found at another URI. When you receive this code it means the file has been temporarily redirected.
404 Page Not Found Error	This is one of the most common status codes. It means the page or item is not found on the server.

Letter A

Above the Fold	This term is adapted from newspapers. For web marketing, the term refers to all content that can be seen without scrolling a webpage. Ads that are located at the top of screen are referred to as above the fold. For best results with an ad, it is best to inegrate the ad into the content. People skip over ads that are apart from the websites main content. So ads at the top of the page or on a sidebar are less likely to be viewed than ads that look like the page’s content. Also, Google penalizes websites that uses above the fold ads excessively.
Absolute Link	A full link to a page that show the entire reference URL.  Absolute links are used over relative links to reduce the chances of canonicalization and hijacking issues.
Activity Bias	When a website is retargeted to an audience who are more likely to participate in certain activity. This can influence the success or failure an ad has on a particular group.
adCenter	Bing ads’ old name. It is Microsoft’s pay per click ad network.
AdSense	This is Google’s contextual advertising network. You can use the network to publish ads that are relevant to your website’s content. If someone clicks on the ad from your website, you can share the profits from that click with Google.
AdWords	This is Google’s advertisement and link auction network that uses keywords to target potential consumers. Advertisers buy keywords at a cost per click rate. In the future, Google will have l video ads, demographic targeting, affiliate ads, radio ads, and traditional print ads available through AdWords.
Affiliate Marketing	Affiliate marketing is a program for merchants who want to expand their reach using independent agents who will charge them cost per action. The agent is only paid when someone clicks your ad on their website.
Age	Age can refer to one of four things.  It could refer to the site age, user account age, page age or any relevant historical data. Search engines and social networks use age to determine whether or not a website, document or person can be trusted. Age can also be use to boost relevancy of webpages. For example, a blog search engine will show a more recent article first before an older article.
AJAX	With Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a web page can request additional data from a server without a mandatory page reload.
Alexa	This is a voice activated search service available on Amazon.com devices such as Echo, Fire TV and Fire Tablets. Users can use it to make comands such as play a certain music playlist or to search the internet. The service also measures website traffic.
AllTheWeb	AllTheWeb is a search engine that has been newly acquired by Yahoo. Yahoo is currently considering using the search engine to test new search technologies.
Alt Attribute	Alt attribute allows you to give your images context.  Visually impared people and search engines cannot always comprehend an image. Alt attribute sums of the image using text.
AltaVista	Search engine from the 1990s who were owned by Overture until Yahoo bought Overture. Currently, AltaVista has become irrelevant due to an algorithmic update that dumped many websites from the search engine.
Amazon.com	This website first started out as a bookseller and now it is the largest internet retailing website. Amazon.com specializes in consumer generated media and owns a number of other popular websites, including IMDB, Goodreads, Audible and Alexa. Amazon also has a markeplace that allows merchants to sell their goods online.  Independent writers can also sell their books via Kindle Direct Publishing or Createspace.
Analytics	Software thatuses a JavaScript tracking code to track user paths, page views and conversion statistics by analyzing your websites log files. Analytics can be engaged once the JavaScript tracking code is embedded in your website.
Anchor Text	Clickable text.  A user clicks on the anchor text to follow a link. An image or an alt attribute that is clickable could also be considered an anchor text.
Android	An operating system from Google that is used to power most cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices.
AOL	American Online is a popular website that was once merged with Time Warner.  AOL offers the latest news via Huffington Post, and it still has an email service.
API	API stands for Application Program Interface. It is a set of routines, tools and protocols used to build software applications. API is used to specify how different software components will interact with each other.  API is very common among search products.
Arbitrage	When you simultaneously purchase and resell a commodity for a profit, you are exploiting the market inefficiencies. In terms of SEO, this means buying traffic from major search engines to try to increase the ad clickthrough rate on your site. Arbitrage draws most of the traffic.
ASP	ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a Microsoft programming language for dynamically generated web pages.
Ask	Originally titled Ask Jeeves, Ask, is a popular search engine powered by the Teoma search techonology, which uses hubs and authorities to decipher search results. Ask is owned by InterActive Corp.
Authority	Authority is a search engine’s ability to rank a website. Link equity, traffic trends, site history, site age and unique original content are factors in determining how a page will rank.
Authorities	Topical authorities are trusted and well cited sites. Experts in the topical community uses the website as a resource. A page is considered a topical hub when it references many authorities.
Automated Bid Management Software	Most people are not working with an endless budget.  This software allows you to control your ad spend when you use pay per click advertising. The software can run analytics on your website and create more focused ads that increase your conversion rates, ROI and earnings.

Letter B

Bait and Switch	Marketing technique where you hook consumers using content that seem innocent. Once you have gained authority, you switch to the real purpose or intent of the your website or content. For example, sharing a picture of a dolphin flipping to get people interested so you can sell hotel rooms.
Banner Blindness	People have become blind to banners. When web marketing was in its infancy, most ads were placed above the fold or other common areas. Over time, people developed banner blindness and ignore ads in common areas.
Battelle, John	the co-founder of The Industry Standard and Wired. He is also a popular media blogger.
Behavioral Targeting	Uses people recent searches or intent to target ads to them. For example, if you search for bed linens, you may go on another unrelated website and see an ad for bed linens.
Bias	A prejudice for or against something based on a person’s experience or point of view.
Bing	Microsoft’s search engine. Yahoo! Search uses it to power organic search results.
Bing Ads	Microsoft’s paid search program that also powers paid search results from Yahoo! Search. It is direct competition with Google Adwords.
Black Hat SEO	Deceptive marketing techniques are labeled black hat SEO. These techniques do not follow search guidelines. Guidelines are always changing. A marketing technique can go from legitimate to deceptive. Keep up-to-date on the latest guidelines.
Block Level Analysis	Makes analyzing a page easier by breaking down the page into smaller blocks.
Blog	A web journal that is updated and formatted in reverse chronological order.  This means the newest entry appears first. Blogs can archive and categorize information using tags.  Blogs encourage feedback by providing users with a comment section.
Blog Comment Spam	When a comment of low value or no value is added to a website.  This can be done manually or automatically using software.
Blogger	Google owns this website that provides a platform for bloggers.
Blogroll	A link list of other relevant or similar blogs.  The blogs could be owned by the same person or by people friends with the blog owner. You could rent out spots on your link list to other bloggers.
Bold	Bold is a typeface option that makes font wider and darker. Bold font draws attention to content.  Search engines give bold words more weight than regular text. So important keywords should be bold and placed in headings.
Bookmarks	Bookmarks allow you to save and mark your favorite pages.  Bookmarks are used to determine the popularity and quality of the information from a webpage. If a page is bookmarked often, it is considered high quality. Search engines also use bookmarks to help garner relevant search results.
Boolean Search	Using words such as AND, OR, or NOT in your searches, creates a mathematical formula.  AND is usually included in your query by default. Thus, all search results will be relevant for all words that make up your query.  For example, if I search “Writing AND publishing” all the results will be relevant to both.
Brand	Consumers associate different emotions with different companies. A brand is that emotional response.
Branded Keywords	Keywords or keyword phrases linked to a brand. This keywords are the highest value and highest converting. Most of these keywords are specific and only occur during the latter stages of the buying process.
Breadcrumb Navigation	Navigational technique used to communicate how pages relate to one another.
Brin, Sergey	Co-founder of Google.
Broken Link	A nonfunctioning hyperlink. A link that does not click to its right location.
Browser	Software or web client used to access the world wide web.
Bush, Vannevar	WWII scientist and writer of As We May Think, a seminal research paper on the concepts of a memory extension device and hypertext.
Business.com	An authority on business websites and information. It contains a directory of business websites. The site also huge for advertising using pay per click arbitrage.
Buying Cycle	The cycle most consumers complete when making a large purchase. The first step is researching brands and products that fit their current needs and desires. With the right keyword, you can reach consumers during any point of the buying cycle. Branded keywords work best, because they have high search volumes and conversion rates.

Letter C

Cache	Search engines store copies of web pages. They place the copies in a search engine index. When you search a term, the search engine references the cache and not the active website.
Calacanis, Jason	Founder of Weblogs, Inc and is responsible for AOL turning Netscape into a Digg clone. This resulted in the launch of longtail SEO play Mahalo.
Canonical URL	The URL that is the most authoritative version that prevents duplicate content issues. It is indexed by search engines.
Catch All Listing	This list monetizes long tail terms and keywords that are not used in targeted ads. It is best to use this technique when you are dealing with common and competitive keywords. Most major search engines prevent this technique and only allows targeted keywords.
CGI	CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is software interface that adds interactivity to a website by offering standard protocols that result in executable actions between the web server and software.
Chrome	A web browser owned by Google. It is also the name of the Operating System for Google Chromebooks.
Client	A computer, program or process used to make information requests to other computers, processes and programs. A web browser is a client.
Cloaking	This technique has to be used with caution. Some search engines may consider displaying various content based on intent and strength of the company’s brand to be reasonable. However, some display discrepancies can lead to a site being banned from the search engine.
Cluetrain Manifesto, The	A book that is a good resource to learn abotu how to use the web as a marketplace. The book also touches on how web marketing is different from traditional offline marketing.
Clustering	This is a technique to make search results more diverse and organized. Pages from an individual site are clustered together, because sites are limited to a certain number. Clustering is also used to group hubs and authorities together. For example, if someone searches on how to reduce clutter, they may get a group of websites clustered together.
CMS	CMS stands for Content Management System. You use this tool to for easy content updates on your website.
Co-citation	This occurs when topical authority based search algorithms links are associated with each other and are assumed to be related. It also refers to the frequency in which two documents or sources are linked together.
Comments	User feedback.
Comments Tag	A source code identifier for comments.
Compacted Information	A product’s generally and widely associated information. For example, ISBNs are widely associated with books.
Conceptual Links	Links which search engines attempt to understand beyond just the words in them. Some rather advanced search engines are attempting to find out the concept links based on context and co-citation versus using the anchor text to index the site.
Concept Search	A search that uses the concept behind the query to give accurate search results.
Contextual Advertising	A webpage’s content is used generate relevant advertisements.
Conversion	Conversion is when an ads desired goal is met. For example, if you create an ad to sell books, a conversion happens when an ad leads to a book sell.
Copyright	This gives you the legal right to reproduce or publish certain content. All content is automatically copyrighted under US Law.
Cookie	Data file trackers placed on a user’s computer to customize web content. Cookies are also used in affiliate programs to track conversions.
CPA	CPA stands for cost per action. Cost per action is used to measure the effectiveness of online advertising. Most affiliate programs use the cost per action structure. Actions can vary from filling out a lead form, buying a product or clicking on an ad.
CPC	CPC stands for Cost per click. Keyword ad services use auctions to sell keywords for a certain price per click.
CPM	CPM stands for cost per thousand ad impressions. It is the price for a 1,000 advertisement impressions.
Crawl Depth	This is the depth to which a website is indexted and crawled.
Crawl Frequency	How frequently users crawl a website.
CSS	CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. You can add styles to web documents using CSS.
CTR	CTR stands for Clickthrough rate. This is the percentage of impressions that lead to a click. CTR is used to measure traffic and how effective keywords are in getting people to click a link.
Cutts, Matt	He is the head of Google’s search quality.
Cybersquatting	This acquires when you register a domain that is silimar to other trademarks or brands. The goal is to attempt to garner interest for your domain using people interested in the other trademark or brand.

Letter D

Dayparting	Making modifications to your ad campaigns based on your target audience availability. You can change an ad bid price, turn the campagin on or off or place budget constraints so that your ad is used when your target audience is the most active online.
Dead Link	A link that is not functional.
Deep Link	A link directs you to a website’s internal page.
Dedicated Server	Independent server used by one website or owned by a single person who uses it for a small group of websites.
Deep Link Ratio	deep links:overall links. How many deep links does a website have compared to overall links.
De-Listing	A website is temporarily or permanently erased from a search engine or index.
Del.icio.us	A website used for social bookmarking.
Demographics	Statistical data or characteristics relating to the specific population.
Denton, Nick	Publisher of Gawker, a closed website that posted contraversal topics in weblogs.
Description	A summary of a website’s content. Most search engines provide a description in the search results.
Digg	Determines what social news is popular through votes from users. Stories with the most votes get better exposure.
Directory	A website catalog that separates websites into categories based on website topics.
Disavow	If you are a webmaster and do not vouch for inbound links to your website, you can use a disavow tool to state this.
DMOZ	AOL owns The Open Directory Project that uses volunteer editors to edit a directory or websites.
DNS	DNS can stand for Domain Name Server or Domain Name System. It resolves any domain name/host name issue.
Domain	A specifice website or a scheme used as a web address.
Doorway Pages	Highly targeted search queries are ranked using these specified pages that redirect users to pages with advertisements.
Dreamweaver	Adobe’s web development and editing software that gives you a mock version of your interface.
Duplicate Content	Content that is copied or a close copy of other content.
Dwell Time	How long a user stays on a website they click on from a search result. Dwell time is only counted when a user clicks back to the search results.
Dynamic Content	Content that is rendered by PHP or other dynamic language to keep content changing over time.
Dynamic Languages	Programming languages for building web pages.

Letter E

Earnings Per Click	An estimation of one’s salary based on how much one click earns.
Editorial Link	Links affect the quality of your website. Search engines value editorial links (earned links) over bought or bartered links.
Emphasis	Text is emphasized using an HTML tag.
Engagement Metrics	An engagement measurement to determine if users find your content engaging.
Entities	Nouns used in queries that search engines use to calculate search results.
Entry Page	The page that lands your user first lands on. It is not automatically the home page. Some links will direct them to internal pages. If a person enters your website via a link to your about page, your about page is their entry page.
Ethical SEO	SEO technique should be labeled either effective or ineffective. Most search engines consider SEO unethical, but it is not.
Everflux	Everflux is a Google term use for search indexes continuous updating and refreshing.
Expert Document	Many non-affiliated topical resources are linked using quality pages.
External Link	Link that directs users to another domain.

Letter F

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.

[glossary]