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Search Engine

A search engine is a searchable index that houses millions of URLs. The term Search Engine is commonly used to describe both directories and search engines. As a server or a collection of servers, search engines are dedicated to indexing and storing internet web pages and providing internet searchers with an ordered list of pages that match a particular query. These indexes are normally generated using indexing spiders. Yahoo is commonly mistaken as a search engine but is actually a directory.

Search Engine Optimization

See Optimization more info on search engine optimization.

Search Engine Promotion

Search Engine Promotion consists of optimizing website pages and creating content rich pages to target specific keyword phrases. It also includes consistent appropriate submitting of pages to the search engines and directories.

Search Term

See Query.

Server

Servers house Internet web pages. Web pages are provided to the searcher through the host server.

Site Hit

See Hit.

Spamming

Spamming (or spamdexing) generally refers to the sending of unsolicited bulk electronic mail. It is also a term used by search engines to refer to methods that they consider unacceptable for increasing page relevancy to better ranking position.

Spider, Spyder

A spider is a robot program that surfs the web to index keywords and page text and then rank and order web pages according to what it deems most relevant. Web pages are then stored for access by internet queries. See also Robot.

Spidering

Due to the ever-changing volume of available data, even the largest search engines are unable to spider all of the internet's pages. As a result, search engines compromise in a number of ways. They may index only home pages for example, or only spider pages that have been submitted to them.

Splash Page

A splash page provides an initial display for viewing before a searcher can reach the main page. It is similar to a gateway page but is an added step that some consider annoying. Most search engines consider it spam.

Stemming

Some search engines and directories support word stemming and recognize common variations of a word. An example of word stemming is "act, acting, actor, acts, actress". If a query for actor is used, pages that have actress, acting or act could also be displayed.

Stop Word

Search engines and directories ignore certain "stop words" like single letter, two-letter and three-letter words (a, the, of, and, but). These common words do not contribute to relevancy and are not recognized in a query.

Submission Service

There are different types of submission services available.Submissions to search engines, directories, classified ad sites and newsgroups are done through submission service providers. The benefit of a submission service is the time saving aspect and the broad scope of targets available.

Targeted Traffic

See qualified traffic.

Title

The site title is often used by the search engine in their display results and ranking of pages. The title is also used when a page is book marked by a visitor.

Traffic

Traffic refers to the visitors a web page or web site receives. It can also refer to the number of hits or visitors over a given period of time.

Unique Visitor (Unique User)

A unique visitor is someone who has not been to the site before or within the past 12 - 48 hours.

URL

The Universal Resource Locator is the address of any given web page.

URL Submission

See Registration.

Visitor

See Unique Visitor.

Web Copywrite

Not unlike the writing of copy for any other type of publication, web copywriting is specifically the writing of text for a web page. Great web copywriting is an intrinsic part of any web optimization strategy.

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