Glossary | Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Companys Web Site (2nd Edition)

301 redirect: Also known as a permanent redirect, an instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested, used when a page has undergone a lasting change in its URL. A permanent redirect is a type of server side redirect that is handled properly by search engine spiders.

302 redirect: Also known as a temporary redirect, an instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested, used when a page has undergone a short-term change in its URL. A temporary redirect is a type of server-side redirect that is handled properly by search engine spiders.

action: The searcher behavior that ultimately results in a Web conversion, usually the purchase of your product. Typically used in "call to action" to describe copy written to induce a conversion, and in "cost per action" to describe the fee for each successful conversion.

advertising agency: A company that helps clients to plan and purchase promotional announcements. Interactive agencies handle e-mail, banner ads, search, and other electronic promotions. Traditional ad agencies cover TV, radio, and print media, but might cover interactive media, too.

affiliate marketing: A technique of marketing and selling products in which a Web site (the affiliate marketer) directs Web visitors to another site (the affiliate program sponsor) and is compensated with a commission for visitor's purchases.

allowable: The highest cost per action that you will pay for a particular product. Your allowable is used with your conversion rate to calculate the maximum per-click fee that you should pay.

alt text: The descriptive text for an image coded in the HTML image tag. The alt attribute on the image tag helps visitors with visual impairments to determine what the images contain, by providing alternative (alt) text.

anchor text: The words that are shown on a page for a hypertext link, usually shown as underlined text in a different color from the surrounding text. Search engines use anchor text to infer the subject matter of the page being linked to.

antiphrase: A search term within a search query that is ignored by some search engines when it looks for matching pages. In the query "what is london's capital," search engines might ignore antiphrase "what is" and search only for "london's capital" (which will probably find better results because the searcher really does not care whether the words what and is are on the matching pages).

application server: The system software that executes the programs that run a Web site. Application servers, also known as Web application servers, are typically used to display dynamic pages.

audience: A Web term analogous to market segment in offline marketing that describes a particular group that a Web site's message is targeted to. Audiences are broader than market segments because they reach beyond customers. Typical Web site audiences include stock analysts, the media, and distribution channels, as well as each of their customer market segments.

authority: The perceived expertise level of a Web site, as measured by its network of inbound hypertext links. Search engines typically place great importance on sites that have many inbound links from other well-linked sites, and place those sites at the top of search results for queries on subjects that match the site's subjects.

authority page: A Web page that has many links to it on a certain subject.

back links: Also known as inbound links, the hypertext links from a page to your page. Inbound links to your page from outside your site are highly valued by search engines performing link analysis when they rank search results by relevance.

banner ad: A promotional message, typically presented as a large colorful rectangle in a prominent part of the page, analogous to an advertisement in a newspaper or a magazine. Clicking a banner ad takes the visitor to the Web site of the sponsor of the ad.

behavior model: An abstract embodiment of the activities of a group of people performing a task that is used to measure and analyze what they are doing. This analysis can suggest improvements to the process being followed for the task.

bid: The price paid to a paid search engine for each referral to secure a ranking in paid search results. In its simplest form, paid search results show a link to the highest bidder's page at the top of the list, and that bidder pays the bid price to the paid search engine each time a visitor clicks the bidder's link.

bid gap: A significant difference between two bids in adjacent positions in a paid placement auction. For example, when the bidder currently ranked #3 has a maximum bid of 50¢, and the #4 bid is 40¢, the bid gap is 10¢.

bid jamming: An aggressive paid placement auction bidding technique that raises your competitor's costs, which might drain his budget a bit faster. A bid jammer bids 1¢ less than the maximum bid of the next-highest position, forcing the other bidder to his maximum bid. For example, when the bidder currently ranked #3 has a maximum bid of 50¢, and the #4 bid is 40¢, the #3 bidder is paying just 41¢ per click. A bid jammer might bid 49¢ to ensure the #3 bidder pays his maximum cost (50¢) for each click.

bid limit: The highest amount that a paid placement bidder is willing to pay for a keyword term.

bid management: The technique used by Web sites to track and control the prices they pay to paid search engines to have their pages listed. Bid management is crucial for large paid search campaigns comprising multiple search keywords over several paid search engines, usually performed with software tools that automate bids based on constraints chosen by the Web site search marketers.

blog: Short for "Web log," an online personal journal, a kind of a periodic column on the Web. Some blogs are reminiscent of a private diary, but others resemble magazine columns focused on a particular subject of interest.

body text: Normal text written in paragraphs and lists on a Web page that have no special significance, as opposed to titles and headings, which connote more importance. Search engines look for query terms in body text, but accord them less relevance than emphasized occurrences, such as in titles.

bookmark: Also known as a favorite, the browser function that enables surfers to store the URLs of a Web pages so they can return at a later time.

bow-tie theory: A model of Web linking patterns that categorizes each page as core pages (strongly linked from and to), destination pages (strongly linked from the core), origination pages (strongly linked to the core), and disconnected pages (not linked from or to the core).

brand manager: The marketing specialist responsible for promoting a particular set of products within your company. Brand managers are responsible for targeting the right people to buy your products and then reaching them with the message that causes them to take action.

brick-and-mortar retailer: The Web-savvy name for a traditional physical store, to contrast it from a Web retailer.

browser: The program that a Web site visitor uses to view and navigate the Web site. The two most famous browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

budget cap: The maximum amount you are willing to spend in a paid search campaign within a defined period of time, ranging from one day to one month. When you "cap" your spending, you are protected from sudden shifts that could be disastrous to your budget, because your ad or product is no longer shown by the search engine once you reach your capno more per-click fees will be charged.

call to action: The sales term for the message that causes the prospective customer to do something that closes a sale or gets them closer to a sale. Web pages that ask you to "add to cart" or "sign up for an e-mail newsletter" contain calls to action.

campaign: A marketing term for a marketing effort of relatively short duration with specific goals for success. A search marketing campaign might last a few months, during which specific keywords might be targeted for paid search, with success measured by the number of sales made from visitors referred by the paid search engines.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS): A set of formatting instructions for each tag in an HTML file that can be customized so that the same tagged file can be formatted in different ways with different style sheets.

case: The capitalization of letters in Western languagesUPPERcase as opposed to lowercase.

categorization: A technique in text analytics to discern document metadata that the author did not correctly provide, such as subject (life insurance), document type (prospectus), and other data.

central search team: The group responsible for coordinating search marketing work across the entire organization, directing the extended search team to execute the search marketing plan.

CGI: Common Gateway Interface, the original technique by which a Web server runs a program to dynamically create the page's HTML and to return it to the visitor's Web browser.

character encoding: The key by which a computer determines which patterns stand for which characters in a computer file. Different national languages contain different characters and require different character encoding schemes.

click: The action that Web users take with their mouse to navigate to a new page. Web metrics programs capture all visitor clicks for measurement and analysis.

click fraud: The unethical act of clicking a paid search listing with no intention of converting, but rather to simply cause the per-click fee to be charged.

clickthrough: The Web metrics term for visitors clicking a link and navigating to a new page. In search marketing, clickthrough rates of paid search results is a very important metric, because it can show search marketers the effectiveness of ad copy in attracting traffic.

clickthrough rate: The Web metrics term for the ratio of visitors seeing a link versus clicking that link and navigating to a new page. In search marketing, clickthrough rates of paid search results is a very important metric because it can show search marketers the effectiveness of ad copy in attracting traffic.

cloaking: An aggressive form of IP delivery, a technique by which a spammer, for the same URL, designs a program to return one page for human visitors and a different version of the page for a search engine's spiderone full of keywords designed to attain a high search ranking. The term cloaking originated from the way site owners blocked visitors from viewing their HTML code to reveal their search optimization secrets.

commerce server: The system software that displays products for sale, and securely takes orders from customers. Commerce servers often display dynamic pages, a fact that presents challenges for search marketing success.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI): The original technique by which a Web server runs a program to dynamically create the page's HTML and to return it to the visitor's Web browser.

community: A naturally occurring subject theme among a group of interlinked Web sites used by the Ask Jeeves to return more relevant search results.

conglomerate: A highly decentralized form of corporate organization typically consisting of quasi-independent companies loosely organized into a single corporation.

consideration set: The sales term for the list of suppliers evaluated by a potential purchaser. Companies not "in the consideration set" cannot make the sale to that purchaser.

content: A Web term for the words and pictures shown on a Web page. Search marketing frequently depends on optimizing content so that search engines can more easily find a page for a relevant query.

content analyzer: A software tool that examines your Web page and offers advice to modify the page's tagging and text to improve search ranking.

content audit: A technique by which an organic search landing page is checked to diagnose problems to improve rankings, referrals, and conversions.

content management system: The system software that manages the process of creation, update, approval, and publishing of Web pages to a Web site. Search marketing success often depends on proper standards for the operation of the content management system.

content writer: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for crafting the words that appear on a Web page designed to convey information, as opposed to selling products.

contextual advertising: A paid merchandising spot displayed on the same page as an article about a related subject. Yahoo! Content Match and Google AdSense are the two leading programs.

conversion: The sales term for closing a sale"converting a prospect to a customer." The traditional definition can be expanded to include Web conversionsany measurable, successful outcome of a Web visitsuch as registering an account or donating to a cause.

conversion rate: The ratio of Web site visitors to Web ordershow many people came to the site versus how many actually purchased.

cookie: A method browsers use to store information that Web pages need to remember. For example, a page can store your visitors' names in cookies so that their names can be displayed on your home page each time they return.

cooperative advertising: A technique by which multiple companies pool their resources on a campaign that benefits them. In paid search, a company selling a product might split the per-click fees with the supplier of a critical component of that product.

copy: The words that appear on a Web page. Search marketing often depends on optimizing the copy so that search engines can more easily find the page in response to relevant search queries.

copywriter: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for crafting the words that appear on a Web page designed to sell products, as opposed to conveying information.

core page: According to the bow-tie theory of Web pages, one of the most linked-to and linked-from pages on the Web. The most popular Web sites tend to have many core pages.

cost per action (CPA): A method of calculating fees whereby money is owed only when the searcher convertstypically by purchasing your product. In practice, CPA pricing is used only for fixed-placement or shopping searches, not bid-based advertising, and runs anywhere from $5 to $50.

cost per click (CPC): A method of calculating fees whereby money is owed to the search engine only when the searcher clicks through on the paid placement advertisement. CPC prices range from about 10¢ (usually the lowest bid allowed) to $30 or sometimes more, with the average around $1.

cost per thousand (CPM): A method of calculating fees whereby money is owed for each impression of an advertisementeach time it's displayed. Usually referred to as CPM (cost per thousandM is the Roman numeral for one thousand), it is usually used for fixed-placement advertising, not bid-based advertising, and it varies from $10 to $30 per thousand impressions (or about 1¢ to 3¢ per single impression).

country map: A page consisting of spider-friendly links to the main page of every country site within your overall Web domain.

CPA: Cost per action, a method of calculating fees whereby money is owed only when the searcher convertstypically by purchasing your product. In practice, CPA pricing is used only for fixed-placement or shopping searches, not bid-based advertising, and runs anywhere from $5 to $50.

CPC: Cost per click, a method of calculating fees whereby money is owed to the search engine only when the searcher clicks through on the paid placement advertisement. CPC prices range from about 10¢ (usually the lowest bid allowed) to $30 or sometimes more, with the average around $1.

CPM: Cost per thousandM is the Roman numeral for one thousanda method of calculating fees whereby money is owed for each impression of an advertisementeach time it's displayed. CPM is usually used for fixed-placement advertising, not bid-based advertising, and it varies from $10 to $30 per thousand impressions (or about 1¢ to 3¢ per single impression).

crawler: Also known as a spider, the part of a search engine that locates and indexes every page on the Web that is a possible answer to a searcher's query. Successful search engine marketing depends on crawlers finding almost all of the pages on a web site.

creative: The copy written for a paid placement advertisement.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheet, a set of formatting instructions for each tag in an HTML file that can be customized so that the same tagged file can be formatted in different ways with different style sheets.

dayparting: A paid placement bidding technique that allows you to set your bids based on time of day, so that your bids are higher at the times of highest conversion.

description tag: The HTML element that contains a synopsis of the page. Search engines sometimes match search queries to page descriptions, so improving the description seems like a good way to begin to optimize your page.

destination page: According to the bow-tie theory of Web pages, a page linked from the core but does not itself link back into the core. Destination pages are typically high-quality pages, but they might be part of corporate Web sites that tend to link internally more then externally.

developer: A specialist who develops software. Web developers develop programs or HTML to display Web pages in your visitor's Web browser.

directory: A list of hundreds or thousands of subjects (such as fly fishing or needlepoint) along with links to Web sites about those subjects. Yahoo! Directory is the most famous example, but most directories are lightly used in comparison to text search technology.

directory listing: One of many hypertext links about a particular subject. Site owners submit a page to request that it be listed in the directory, and say that they have a "directory listing" when their submission is accepted. Yahoo! Directory and Open Directory are the most famous examples of Web directories.

disconnected page: According to the bow-tie theory of Web pages, a page not directly connected to the core. Disconnected pages might have links to or from origination and destination pages, or they might be linked only to other disconnected pages.

disintermediation: A Web-savvy term for "cutting out the middleman." Disintermediation was much discussed during the Internet boom, but has not been as sweeping as the hype would lead you to believe.

domain name: The spoken language label for an Internet Web site that can be used for Web surfing or e-mail. The domain name (dell.com) follows the "at" sign (@) in an e-mail address (michael@dell.com) and the www. in a Web URL (www.dell.com).

doorway page: Also known as a gateway page or an entry page, a spam technique by which a page is designed solely to achieve high search rankings, with no value to visitors to your site. Unlike search landing pages, a doorway page is usually kept as hidden as possible from visitors who navigate through the site.

dynamic page: Web page whose HTML is generated by a software program at the moment the page is displayed. Dynamic pages are necessary when a page contains content that must change based on the visitor, such as an order status screen. A software program must retrieve the order status for the visitor from a database and build the HTML that shows the correct information on the screen. Dynamic pages often pose difficulties for search marketing that static pages do not.

entity extraction: A technique in text analytics that identifies the type of noun in a sentence, such as person names, company names, and place names, for example.

entry page: Also known as a gateway page or a doorway page, a spam technique by which a page is designed solely to achieve high search rankings, with no value to visitors to your site. Unlike search landing pages, an entry page is usually kept as hidden as possible from visitors who navigate through the site.

extended search team: The collective group responsible for executing the search marketing plan coordinated by the central search team. The extended search team is a new name for the various Web teams that already maintain the Web site, connoting their critical role in search marketing success.

eXtensible Markup Language (XML): A standard for a markup language, similar to HTML, that allows tags to be defined to describe any kind of data you have, making it very popular as a format for data feeds.

external link: A hypertext connection from one Web site to another, allowing visitors to move to the new site. Search engines treat these links as endorsements of the receiving site by the sending site.

filter: A constraint on a search that sets the scope of results, such as a country or language. Pages that are not included by the filters for a query do not appear in the results.

fixed placement: A technique by which a search marketer negotiates the appearance of an advertisement in a particular place on a page for a given search query, usually paying for impressions (the number of times the ad is shown), rather than for clicks.

Flash: A technology invented by Macromedia that brings a far richer user experience to the Web than drab old HTML, allowing animation and other interactive features that spice up visual tours and demonstrations.

frames: An old technique of HTML coding that can display multiple sources of content in separate scrollable windows in the same HTML page. Frames have many usability problems for visitors, and have been replaced with better ways of integrating content on the same pageusing content management systems and dynamic pages.

friendly URL: A paid placement auction bidding technique that marketers employ to stay out of costly bidding wars by always bidding lower than the maximum bid of the identified bidderthe one with the "friendly URL" that a marketer does not want to compete with.

freshness: The search name for how quickly pages that change have those changes reflected in the search. Search engines that reflect changes rapidly have a higher freshness than those that do not.

functional organization: A highly centralized form of corporate organization typical of small-to-medium businesses with a small number of similar products that are sold to the same customers. The organization is divided by function, such as marketing or sales.

gap surfing: A paid placement auction bidding technique in which you scan the list of paid placement results, looking for significant differences between bids. You then adjust your bid to be just higher than the lower bid in the gap. If the #1 result is bidding 70¢, the #2 result is bidding 50¢, and the #3 result is bidding 40¢, the largest gap is between the first two results, so a gap surfer would bid 51¢ to claim the #2 ranking.

gateway page: Also known as a doorway page or an entry page, a spam technique by which a page is designed solely to achieve high search rankings, with no value to visitors to your site. Unlike search landing pages, a gateway page is usually kept as hidden as possible from visitors who navigate through the site.

geographic targeting: A technique that search engines use to display paid search results from a particular geographic area. Search engines typically use the searcher's IP address to determine the correct location and then show the listings that their advertisers have requested be shown. Geographic targeting is different from local search, in which searchers enter the location as part of their query.

governance specialist: The specialist of the extended search team responsible for enforcing your company's operational standards. A Web governance specialist enforces your Web site's operational standards.

guest book: A part of a Web site that allows visitors to post their contact information and comments about that site.

hate site: Also known as a negative site, a Web site whose primary purpose is to discredit another organization or Web site. These sites frequently use the name of another site with the word sucks appended to the domain name, such as yourdomainsucks.com.

heading tag: The HTML element that contains an emphasized section name that breaks up the body text. Search engines treat matches found in the heading tags as more important than those in body text, so improving headings seems like a good way to begin to optimize your page.

hidden links: A spam technique in which hypertext links are designed to be seen by spiders but not by human visitors. Spammers load up lots of links from high-ranking pages to other pages they are trying to boost.

hidden text: A spam technique in which text on a page is designed to be seen by spiders but not by human visitors. Text can be hidden by displaying text in incredibly small sizes or with the same font color as the background color, or by writing keywords on the page that are then overlaid by graphics or other page elements. Spammers load up the page with keywords to gain higher search rankings.

home page: The page on a Web site that is displayed when the domain name (such as www.sony.com) is entered into the browser.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language, the markup tagging system used to denote the semantic element of all content. For example, all paragraphs are marked with a paragraph tag, and all headings are identified with heading tags. Web browsers interpret each tag to determine how to format the text on the screen when displaying that page.

hub page: A Web page that links to many other pages about a certain subject.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): The markup tagging system used to denote the precise document element of every piece of text on a Web page. For example, all paragraphs are marked with a paragraph tag, and all headings are identified with heading tags. Web browsers interpret each tag to determine how to format the text on the screen when displaying that page.

impression: A term derived from banner advertising that denotes each time your ad is shown to someone. The number of clicks for your ad is divided by the number of impressions to derive the clickthrough rate.

inbound links: Also known as back links, the hypertext links from a page to your page. Inbound links to your page from outside your site are highly valued by search engines performing link analysis when they rank search results by relevance.

inclusion ratio: The percentage of your site's pages residing in a search index, calculated by dividing the number of pages found in a search index by the total number of pages you have estimated to be on your site. For example, if MSN reports that you have 1,000 pages indexed, and your content management system has 2,000 documents in it, your MSN inclusion ratio is 1,000 ÷ 2,000 = 0.5 or 50 percent.

index: The list used by the search engine of each word on the Web, along with which pages each word is on. When a searcher enters a query, the search engine looks for the words in that query in the search index and locates the pages that contain those words. The search index is the primary database of a search engine, and no search engine can work without a very well-designed index.

indexing: The process by which the spider stores each word on the Web, along with what pages each word is on. The search index is the primary database of a search engine, and no search engine can work if it does not have a very well-designed index.

informational searcher: A user who enters a search query looking for deep information about a specific subject. Informational searchers are looking for several top results that shed light on the subject, not one particular answer.

information architect: 1. The Web specialist who decides the navigational structure of a Web sitehow information is divided into separate pages, which pages link where, what nomenclature is used on a link to ensure people know what it is, and many other tasks. 2. The software specialist who determines the correct way to organize data fields in a database or a set of databases.

information retrieval: The name used by computer scientists to describe organic search technology.

interactive advertising agency: A company that helps clients plan and purchase online promotional announcements, such as e-mail ads, banner ads, search, and other electronic promotions.

interactive media: Electronic promotions such as e-mail, banner ads, and search, that drive visitors to your Web site. Advertising agencies often handle client purchases of interactive media.

interior link: A hypertext connection to a page deep within your site, rather than one to the home page, for example.

internal link: A hypertext connection from one page of a Web site to another page within the same site, allowing visitors to move to the new page. Search engines do not treat these links with much importance.

IP delivery: A technique by which a site owner can deliver customized content based upon the IP address of the visitor. When used within ethical standards, it allows a site to present local language or entitled content to specific visitors to reroute search engines around complex URL structures or give them exclusive access to databases that would normally require a query to retrieve the information. When used unethically, it is usually called "cloaking"a spam technique, which, for the same URL, returns one page for human visitors and a different version of the page for a search engine's spider (one full of keywords designed to attain a high search ranking).

JavaScript: A programming language that can provide special effects inside a browser that cannot be performed in HTML. Search marketing success depends on certain standards about how and when JavaScript programming is used, because JavaScript, when misused, can prevent search spiders from indexing certain pages.

JavaScript redirect: A way of using a program to instruct Web browsers to display a different URL from the one requested (such as <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> window.location="http://www.yourdomain.com/newURL"</script>). JavaScript redirects, unfortunately, are usually ignored by search engine spiders, so this technique should be avoided.

KEI: Keyword effectiveness index, a mathematical representation of the popularity of a keyword (the number of searches containing it) compared to its popularity in usage (the number of Web pages it is found on).

keyword: A particular word or phrase that search marketers expect searchers to enter frequently as a query.

keyword demand: The number of searches for a particular query across all search engines within a defined period of time. Whereas search referrals tell you how many searchers click through to your site, keyword demand tells you how many total searches used that keyword at all search sites, whether the searchers clicked through or not.

keyword density: Also known as term density, the ratio of a particular search query's terms to all terms on a page. For example, if you want your 200-word page to be found for the query "insomnia" and your page contains 12 occurrences of that word, the keyword density of your page is 6 percent for the term insomnia (12 ÷ 200). Search engines typically consider pages with about 6 to 7 percent keyword density to be very high quality pages. (Higher keyword densities are sometimes suspected as spam.)

keyword effectiveness index (KEI): A mathematical representation of the popularity of a keyword (the number of searches containing it) compared to its popularity in usage (the number of Web pages it is found on).

keyword loading: Also known as keyword stuffing, a spam technique by which keywords are overused in content merely to attract the search engines.

keyword placement: Also known as term placement, a measurement of the value of the location of a word on a Web page. All words do not have equal importance on a page. Words in a title or in a heading are more important than words in a body paragraphthese locations of keywords are their placement. Placement and position comprise keyword prominence.

keyword planning: The process of deciding which words and phrases a search marketer should target in a search marketing campaign.

keyword position: Also known as term position, a measurement of how close to the beginning of a Web page element that a word appears. For example, words at the beginning of the body element are usually more important than those that show up later in that same element. Position and placement comprise keyword prominence.

keyword prominence: A measurement that combines the placement and position of a term on a page to indicate its relative value to a search engine. The most prominent keyword location is the first word of the page's title, because the title is the best placement and the first word is the best position. Pages with a keyword in prominent locations tend to be good matches.

keyword proximity: Also known as term proximity, a measurement of the nearness of different search terms to each other within a matching page. Two words from the searcher's query that are adjacent to each other on a page have the highest proximity, and would tend to be ranked higher than pages where the terms were a paragraph apart, for example.

keyword research: The step in the keyword planning process during which search marketers discover all the possible words and phrases they should target.

keyword rarity: Also known as term rarity, a measurement of the frequency that a term is used on all pages across the Web. In a multiple-word search query, some words might be very common, whereas others relatively rare. The search engines gives higher weight to pages that contain rare terms than common terms when ranking the results.

keyword stuffing: Also known as keyword loading, a spam technique by which keywords are overused in content merely to attract the search engines.

keyword variant: A different form of a search query in which the individual terms in a keyword are presented in a different order, or use different forms of the words. For example, "hotels in london" and "london hotel" are variants of the same essential search keyword, even though the word order and the form of the word hotel (singular or plural) is different in each case.

landing page: The URL on your Web site where visitors will go when they click a particular link. A search landing page, for example, is the URL a searcher is led to after clicking an organic or paid search result.

language metatag: An HTML tag declaring the language of the page (such as <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="ja"> to indicate a page written in Japanese). Because in practice these tags are often syntactically incorrect or have the wrong language encoded, search engines never decide the language of the page based on this tag alone.

lead: A prospective customer passed from one business to another (or passed from one part of a company to another) who might eventually complete a transaction to become a customer. The number of leads passed is a critical measurement for businesses that cannot close a sale on the Webthey must attract interest in their products on the Web, but "pass the lead" to an offline channel to continue the sales process that might culminate in a sale.

lifetime value: A method quantifying what each new customer is worth, not just for the first purchase but for the lifetime of purchases from that customer.

link: A set of words, a picture, or other "hotspot" on a web page that, when clicked, takes the visitor to another Web page. Search engines pay special attention to outbound links when crawling pages and to inbound links when ranking pages by relevance to respond to a search query.

link analysis: Also known as link popularity, the technique used by search engines to determine the authority of Web pages by examining the network of connections between Web pages. Search engines use link analysis when ranking search results by relevancepages that have many inbound links from highauthority pages are ranked higher than other pages in the search results.

link auction: A method of buying a high-value hypertext connection to your site by outbidding other sites. Some Web sites, known as link auction sites, specialize in running the bidding for parties that wish to buy and sell links.

link audit: A procedure by which you analyze every hypertext connection to your landing page, or even to your whole site. Link audits help you to identify which pages have few or low-quality links and would be good targets for link-building campaigns.

link-building campaigns: A method by which you attract more hypertext connections to your site, often by contacting other Web sites and making a request.

link farm: A spam technique by which search marketers set up dozens or hundreds of sites that can be crawled by search engines, just so they can put in thousands of links to sites they want to boost in search rankings.

link landing page: The URL a searcher is led to after clicking a hypertext link from another Web site.

link popularity: Also known as link analysis, the technique used by search engines to determine the authority of Web pages by examining the network of connections between Web pages. Search engines use link analysis when ranking search results by relevancepages that have many inbound links from highauthority pages are ranked higher than other pages in the search results.

link within the family: A hypertext link between two sites that search engines consider to be biased, perhaps because they have similar IP addresses, Whois information, or anchor text. Search engines seek to downgrade these links because they are not between neutral partiesthe endorsement that the link provides is not as valuable as others.

local search: A technique that search engines use to display results from a particular geographic area. Searchers might actually enter the location as part of the query (such as "philadelphia restaurant") or might have saved their location from a previous query. Local search is different from geographic targeting, in which paid placement results are selected based on the searcher's location, regardless of whether the query was intended to return results for a particular location.

local search engine: 1. A search engine from a particular country or region, as contrasted with engines that attract searchers worldwide. 2. A search engine designed mainly to provide local search, such as Internet Yellow Page providers.

log file: A file on your Web server that serves as a record of every action the server has taken. Log files can be analyzed in complex ways to determine the number of visits to your site (by people and by search engine spiders) and the number of pages that they view.

markup: A publishing technique where text is tagged according to its meaning within the document so that computers can format and find the text more easily. Markup languages such as HTML allow content authors to "mark up" parts of their documents with tags denoting each document element. For example, a title tag (<title>About Our Company</title>) identifies the title of a Web page.

marketing mix: The combination of ways in which you spend your marketing budget (TV, radio, print, and so on). Making a commitment to search marketing usually implies that some other expenditure must be reduced in your marketing mix.

market segment: A group of customers with similar needs that receive the same marketing messages for your products. For your Web site, market segments are usually defined as audiences that include groups beyond your customers (stock analysts, press, and others). Your Web site messages are usually targeted to several market segments (audiences).

match: A Web page found by a search engine in response to a searcher's query. Search engines use various techniques to determine which pages match each query, and then rank the pages by relevance so the best matches are presented first.

match type: The way that paid placement advertisers decide how their keywords correspond to searchers' queries. Paid placement vendors offer varying match types, providing control over how closely the keywords must match the queries before displaying the ad.

mega-keyword: A search query that is entered frequently by searchers.

merchant rating: A score assigned by shopping search engines to each company selling products, based on customer reviews of the company's service.

meta refresh redirect: A metatag in the <head> section of your HTML that instructs a Web browser to show a different URL from the one entered (such as <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; URL= http://www.yourdomain.com/newURL" />). This tag flashes a screen (in this case for five seconds) before displaying the new URL. Unfortunately, this technique is usually ignored by search engine spiders, so it should be avoided.

metasearch engine: A search engine that sends the query entered by the searcher to several other search engines, collating the results from each into a single results list.

metatag: A particular kind of document element that is "about" the document rather than an intrinsic part of the document. HTML tagging standards specify numerous metatags, including titles, descriptions, dates, and many others. Metatags are especially important to search engines because they contain key clues about a page's overall relevance to a search query.

metrics specialist: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for compiling and reporting statisticshow many visitors come to the site, customer satisfaction survey results, the number of sales, and many more.

microsite: A small Web site, separate from your corporate site, designed to make Web metrics easier to collect for your search campaigns.

multifaceted search: A search technique that allows searchers to restrict the search results by responding to choices offered by the search engine. Multifaceted search allows searchers to continually narrow down their results by choosing another constraint on their search.

multinational organization: A form of corporate organization in which the company is divided by country.

natural language search engine: A search designed to accept natural language queries (such as "What is the capital of Florida?") and get an answer, not just a list of documents containing the words. Ask Jeeves is the most famous search engine with this kind of capability.

natural search: Also known as organic search, the technique by which a search engine finds the most relevant matches for a searcher's query from all of the pages indexed from the Web. Natural search contrasts with paid search, in which bidders vie for the highest rankings by topping each others' bids.

navigational searcher: A user who enters a search query looking for a specific Web site as a result. A searcher using the query "cornell university" is looking specifically for www.cornell.edu, and no other result.

negative site: Also known as a hate site, a Web site whose primary purpose is to discredit another organization or Web site. These sites frequently use the name of another site with the word sucks appended to the domain name, such as yourdomainsucks.com.

noframes tag: An HTML tag designed to provide alternate content for (ancient) browsers that do not support frames. Search engine spiders use this alternate content to index your page, but you are better off eliminating frames altogether.

noscript tag: An HTML tag designed to provide alternate content for older browsers that do not support JavaScript. Search engine spiders also use this alternate content to index your page.

objective bidding: A style of paid placement auction bidding that relies on metrics to drive each bid.

offline sales: Revenue from product purchases in which customers began the sales process on the Web but transacted the purchase on the phone, in person, or through some other off-Web channel.

one-way link: A hypertext connection to a page with no corresponding reciprocal link back to the source.

online commerce site: A Web site that transacts sales of products, even though it might use offline distribution channels to ship the product to the customer. (Pure online sites, in contrast, need no physical shipment.) Examples include retailer amazon.com and competitor buy.com.

optimizing content: A search marketing term for modifying the words and pictures shown on a Web page so that search engines can more easily find that page for a relevant query.

organic search: Also known as natural search, the technique by which a search engine finds the most relevant matches for a searcher's query from all of the pages indexed from the Web. Organic search contrasts with paid search, in which bidders vie for the highest rankings by topping each others' bids.

origination page: According to the bow-tie theory of Web pages, a page with numerous links into the core but relatively few from the core. Origination pages might be new or not terribly high quality, so they have not attracted the links back to them that would mark them as part of the core.

outbound link: A hypertext link from your page to a different page on the Web, perhaps within your site, or maybe to another site.

page designer: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for the visual appearance of the page, frequently handling the HTML templates and style sheets used. Search marketing often depends on the page designer optimizing the templates so that search engines can more easily find the page in response to relevant search queries.

page ranking factor: Also known as a query independent ranking factor, any characteristic of an organic search match that is unrelated to the terms in the search query. Page ranking factors can take into account anything the search engine knows about the page itselfwhich pages that link to that page, the site that contains the page, and many other components. These factors are used in the organic search ranking algorithm to sort the best results to the top of the list. Because it does not vary by the query, any particular page's page factor score is exactly the same for every querya page with strong page factors starts out with a high score for every word that is on that page.

page submission: A method of telling a search engine about the existence of a URL that you would like crawled. Search engines vastly prefer to find new sites by following links, but do offer ways to manually submit your home page's URL if your site is somehow not discovered.

page view: The Web metrics term used to count how many Web pages on a site have been viewed by individual visitors. If three people view a page once, and two people view that same page twice, that page is said to have seven page views.

paid inclusion: A service offered by some search engines (such as Yahoo!) that guarantee a Web site's pages are stored in the search index in return for a fee. Paid inclusion does not guarantee high search rankings for those pagesjust that the pages will always be present in the index and that the spider will frequently revisit each included page to make sure the index is kept up to date with changes made on the Web site.

paid link: A hypertext connection to a target site that has been purchased from the source site.

paid listing: An entry in a Web directory. Directories contain hundreds or thousands of subjects (such as fly fishing or needlepoint) along with links to Web sites about those subjects. Yahoo! Directory is the most famous example.

paid placement: The technique by which a search engine devotes space on its search results page to displays links to a Web site's page based on the highest bid for that space. Most search engines distinguish paid placement results from organic results on its results page, but some do not.

paid search: Any service offered by a search engine in return for a fee, including paid inclusion, paid placement, and directory services.

parameter: The name of a variable in a software program that displays dynamic Web pages. The URL www.domain.com?product=45 contains a parameter named product and a value of 45. The software program uses the parameter and its associated value to decide which content to display on the page.

permanent redirect: Also known as a 301 redirect, an instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL than the one the browser requested, used when a page has undergone a lasting change in its URL. A permanent redirect is a type of server-side redirect that is handled properly by search engine spiders.

phrase: A search term within a search query consisting of multiple words enclosed in double quotation marks, indicating to the search engine that those words be found as is on any matching page. If words are not enclosed in double quotes, they are treated as individual words to search for rather than as a phrase to be found together.

pop-under window: A browser window that opens in the background on your screen, frequently containing an advertisement.

pop-up window: A browser window that overlays the Web page on your screen, frequently containing an advertisement.

portal: The system software that manages the display of Web pages for a Web site, frequently including the use of personalization rules that dynamically choose what content to display based on what is known about the visitor. Search marketing success often depends on proper standards for the operation of the portal software.

precision: A search metric that measures the number of "correct" organic search matches returned by the search engine for a query compared to the number of total matches returned. If the search engine returns ten matches, of which nine are judged "correct," its precision for that query is 90 percent. (Precision is a subjective measurement, because it is based on someone's judgment of what is a "correct" match.)

primary demand: The name used by economists to describe the state of a prospective buyer in the very early stages of consideration of a purchase.

product-oriented organization: A form of corporate organization in which the company is divided by product, so that each product or product line sold by the company is run by a semi-autonomous group as if it were a standalone business.

profit margin: A financial term, the measurement of return on the sale per item. Profit margin is calculated as (Revenue Cost) ÷ Price.

programmer: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for developing the software that runs the Web site. Search marketing often depends on the programmer following certain standards so that search engines can more easily find pages in response to relevant search queries.

pull-down navigation: A style of user interface in which a menu of links is hidden until the visitor clicks the exposed part of the menuthat action is referred to as "pulling down" the menu, because the links are then displayed underneath the area clicked.

pure online site: A Web site that not only transacts sales of products but also delivers products to customers without any physical shipment. Examples include stock purchases at schwab.com and music downloads at itunes.com.

qualified visitor: A person coming to your Web site that is within the targeted market segments for your producta person who you are trying to attract because they are able to buy.

query: The words that a searcher types into a search engine to identify what information should be searched for. Some queries are a single word, but others can consist of multiple words and might contain search operators.

query-dependent ranking factor: Also known as a query ranking factor, any characteristic of an organic search match that is related to the terms in the search query. Query ranking factorsincluding prominence, density, frequency, and othersare used in the organic search ranking algorithm to sort the best results to the top of the list.

query-independent ranking factor: Also known as a page ranking factor, any characteristic of an organic search match that is unrelated to the terms in the search query. Page ranking factors can take into account anything the search engine knows about the page itselfwhich pages that link to that page, the site that contains the page, and many other components. These factors are used in the organic search ranking algorithm to sort the best results to the top of the list. Because it does not vary by the query, any particular page's page factor score is exactly the same for every querya page with strong page factors starts out with a high score for every word that is on that page.

query ranking factor: Also known as a query independent-ranking factor, any characteristic of an organic search match that is related to the terms in the search query. Query ranking factorsincluding prominence, density, frequency, and othersare used in the organic search ranking algorithm to sort the best results to the top of the list.

ranking: The technique by which a search engine sorts the matches to produce a set of search results. Although some search engines can sort by the date of the Web page, the most common ranking method is by relevance. The software code that decides exactly how the ranking is performed is called the ranking algorithm, and is a trade secret for each search engine.

ranking algorithm: The software instructions that control precisely how search matches are sorted into the order in which they are displayed on the search results page. Search matches are sometimes ranked by the date of the pages, but are most frequently ranked by relevance. A search engine's relevance ranking algorithm is one of the most proprietary parts of its secret sauce.

ranking checker: An automated tool that analyzes where a particular URL or set of URLs appear in the search results for a query.

ranking factor: Any characteristic of an organic search match that can be used by a ranking algorithm to sort the matches for presentation on the search results page. Relevance ranking algorithms use myriad factors, including the location on the page that matches the query, the authority of the page (based on link analysis), the proximity of different words in the query to each other on the page, and many more.

recall: A search metric that measures the number of "correct" organic search matches returned by the search engine for a query compared to the number of "correct" matches that exist in the search index. If the search engine returns nine "correct" matches, but ten "correct" matches exist in the search index, its recall for that query is 90 percent. (Recall is a subjective measurement, because it is based on someone's judgment of what is a "correct" match.)

reciprocal link: Also known as a two-way link, a hypertext connection to a page that has a corresponding link back to the source.

redirect: An instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested. Redirects are used when the URL of a page has changed. They allow old URLs to be "redirected" to the current URL, so that your visitors do not get a "page not found" message (known as an HTTP 404 error) when they use the old URL.

referral: The Web metrics term for the event of a page being viewed after viewing a previous page. Web metrics systems capture the referrer URL for each page view so that referrals from particular places, such as search engines, can be counted and analyzed.

referrer: The URL of the page that a visitor came from before coming to the current page. Web metrics systems capture the referrer for each page view so that referrals from particular places, such as search engines, can be counted and analyzed.

relational link: An in-bound hypertext link to your site that you solicited based on an existing business relationship, such as the relationships your company has with suppliers, resellers, and customers.

relevance: The degree to which an organic search match is closely related to the query. A match with extremely high relevance is a candidate to be the #1 result for that query. Search engines typically sort the matches by relevance for presentation on the search results page using a relevance ranking algorithm. Relevance ranking algorithms use myriad factors, including the location on the page that matches the query, the authority of the page (based on link analysis), the proximity of different words in the query to each other on the page, and many more.

relevance ranking: The technique by which a search engine sorts the matches to produce a set of organic search results whose top matches most closely relate to the query. The software code that decides exactly how the relevance ranking is performed is called the ranking algorithm, and is a trade secret for each search engine. Relevance ranking algorithms use myriad factors, including the location on the page that matches the query, the authority of the page (based on link analysis), the proximity of different words in the query to each other on the page, and many more.

result: A link to a matching Web page returned by a search engine in response to a searcher's query. Search engines use various techniques to determine which pages match each query, and then rank the organic search matches by relevance so the best matches are presented first in the search results. Paid placement and directory results are typically governed by a mixture of relevance and the amount bid by the owner of the Web site listed.

results page: The Web page containing the search engine's response to the query. Each search engine has a unique layout for its results page, but it is typically a mixture of organic and paid placement results, with directory listings also possible.

return on advertising spend (ROAS): A financial term measuring the revenue impact of media expense using a formula such as Revenue ÷ Expense. Calculating the ROAS of several advertisements can help increase spending on the best ones.

return on investment (ROI): A financial term measuring the monetary impact of an investment using a formula such as Profit ÷ Cost. Projecting the ROI of several possible investments can help you choose the best one.

ROAS: Return on advertising spend, a financial term that measures the revenue impact of media expense using a formula such as Revenue ÷ Expense. Calculating the ROAS of several advertisements can help increase spending on the best ones.

robot: A little-known name for a crawler or spider, the part of a search engine that locates and indexes every page on the Web that is a possible answer to a searcher's query. Typically used only when discussing the robots HTML tag or the robots.txt file.

ROI: Return on investment, a financial term that measures the monetary impact of an investment using a formula such as Profit ÷ Cost. Projecting the ROI of several possible investments can help you choose the best one.

sandbox effect: The informal name used by search marketing experts to describe the treatment of new sites by Google and other search engines when they discount the effect of a quick change in link popularity. Your page can play around all it wants, but it will stay in its "sandbox," without breaking into the top rankings for any queries. If its new-found popularity, over time, remains constant or even gradually grows larger, and then the search engines begin to remove the discounts and give full weight to the link popularity, allowing search rankings to rise.

search engine marketing (SEM): All the activities designed to improve search referrals to a Web site using either organic or paid search. Search engine marketing is also known as search marketing.

search engine optimization (SEO): The set of techniques and methodologies devoted to improving organic search rankings (not paid search) for a Web site.

searcher: The Web user who enters a query into the input box of a search engine and request that a search be performed.

searcher context: The conditions under which a searcher enters a search query, including permanent or semi-permanent characteristics (such as gender, job role, and marital status) and more ephemeral factors (such as current geographic location, the subjects of pages viewed recently, and recent search keywords).

searcher intent: The goals that a Web user has when entering search queries, examining results, or choosing the result to click.

search filter: A constraint on a search that sets the scope of results, such as a country or language. Pages that are not included by the filters for a query do not appear in the results.

search index: A special database that stores every word found on every Web page, along with the list of pages that each word was found on. When a searcher enters a search query, the organic search engine consults the search index to find the list of pages that match the query.

search landing page: The URL a searcher is led to after clicking an organic or paid search result.

search marketing: All of the activities designed to improve search referrals to a Web site using wither organic or paid search. Search marketing is also known as search engine marketing (SEM).

search operator: A character with a special meaning to a search engine that controls the way the engine matches the query for organic search. Common operators include double quotation marks (treat enclosed words as a phrase), the plus sign (the following term is required), and the minus sign (the following term must not appear in any results).

search query: The words that a searcher types into a search engine to identify what information should be searched for. Some queries are a single word, but others can consist of multiple words and might contain search operators.

search referral: The Web metrics term for the event of a page being viewed after viewing a search results page. Web metrics systems capture the referrer URL for each page view so that referrals from search engines can be counted and analyzed.

search result: A link to a matching Web page returned by a search engine in response to a searcher's query. Search engines use various techniques to determine which pages match each query, and then rank the organic search matches by relevance so the best matches are presented first in the search results. Paid placement and directory results are typically governed by a mixture of relevance and the amount bid by the owner of the Web site listed.

search term: One word or phrase from the search query. Words enclosed in double quotation marks (the phrase operator) are treated as a single search term, but other words are treated as individual single-word terms.

search toolbar: A program used to enter search queries on your browser screen without first going to a search engine's Web site.

seed list: The enumeration of starting URLs for a spider to begin crawling Web pages. Spiders examine each page to see what other linked pages it should go to next, but it requires a seed list of starting points when it begins crawling.

selective demand: The name used by economists to describe what a prospective buyer exhibits when weighing the purchase of a particular brand or model of a product.

SEM: Search engine marketing, the activities designed to improve search referrals to a Web site using either organic or paid search. Search engine marketing is also known as search marketing.

SEO: Search engine optimization, the set of techniques and methodologies devoted to improving organic search rankings (not paid search) for a Web site.

server: A computer (or a program running on a computer) that responds to a client program's request. For example, a Web server responds to its client, a Web browser.

server-side redirect: An instruction from the Web server to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested. Two common forms of server-side redirects are 301 (permanent) and 302 (temporary) redirects, named after the HTTP status codes they return to the browser. Server-side redirects are handled properly by search engine spiders.

session: Synonymous with a visit, a Web metrics term for a single series of pages viewed from a single Web site. If a visitor comes to a Web site and views five pages before leaving to go to a new site, the metrics system logs five page views but just one session.

session identifier: Dynamic URL parameters (usually named "ID=" or "Session=" or some other similar name) used by a Web metrics system to keep track of each unique visitor looking at a single page or at a series of pages in a visit to a site. Search engine spiders typically do not index pages with a session identifier.

shopping search engine: A search engine specially designed to allow comparison of features and prices for a wide variety of products.

site map: A page consisting of spider-friendly links to the rest of your Web domain. For a small site, your site map can have direct links to every page on your site. Medium-to-large sites use site maps with links to major hubs within the domain (which in turn allow eventual navigation to every page on the site).

snippet: The short paragraph that a search engine generates under the title (on the results page) to display the relevant passages on the page for the query.

solicited link: A hypertext link to your site that you received by explicitly requesting the other site to link to yours.

spam: 1. Unsolicited illegal e-mail, usually containing a sales pitch or a fraudulent scheme offered to the recipient without permission. 2. Also known as spamdexing, unethical (but legal) techniques undertaken by a Web site designed to fool organic search engines to display its pages, even though they are not truly the best matches for a searcher's query.

spamdexing: Also known simply as spam, unethical (but legal) techniques undertaken by a Web site designed to fool organic search engines to display its pages, even though they are not truly the best matches for a searcher's query.

specialty search engine: A search engine that focuses on just one or two product categories or subject areas.

spelling correction: A feature of most engines that suggest possible changes to the searcher's query when it appears to be finding relatively few matches and a different spelling yields many more matches. Google's "Did you mean . . .?" ability is a classic example of spelling correction as applied to search.

spider: Also known as a crawler, the part of a search engine that locates and indexes every page on the Web that is a possible answer to a searcher's query. Successful search engine marketing depends on crawlers finding almost all the pages on a Web site.

spider paths: Easy-to-follow navigation routes through your site, such as site maps, category maps, country maps, or even text links at the bottom of the key pages. Spider paths include any means that allow the spider to easily get to all the pages on your site.

spider trap: A barrier that prevents spiders from crawling a site, usually stemming from technical approaches to displaying Web pages that work fine for browsers, but do not work for spiders. Examples of spider traps include JavaScript pull-down menus and some kinds of redirects.

static page: A Web page whose HTML is stored in a file for display by a Web server. Static pages typically do not change based on the visitorthey look the same to each person who views themin contrast to dynamic pages.

stop word: Words that occur with very high frequency (such as an or the) ignored by search engines when entered by a searcher.

style guide: The rules governing the look and feel of the Web site, including page layouts, color schemes, information architecture, and many other areas.

style guide developer: The Web specialist of your extended search team that maintains the style guide rules governing the look and feel of the Web site.

style sheet: A set of formatting instructions for each tag in an HTML or XML file that can be customized so that the same tagged file can be formatted in different ways with different style sheets.

summarization: A text analytics technique whereby an entire document can be condensed into a short abstract of a few sentences.

syndication: A business arrangement by which results from one search engine are provided for display by another search engine. AOL, for example, shows Google's paid placement ads on the AOL search results page, and is thus a syndication partner of Google's.

tag: A method of marking text in a document with its meaning so that computers can format and find the text more easily. Markup languages such as HTML allow content authors to "mark up" parts of their documents with tags denoting each document element. For example, the title tag (<title>About Our Company</title>) identifies the title of a Web page.

temporary redirect: Also known as a 302 redirect, an instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested, used when a page has undergone a short-term change in its URL. A temporary redirect is a type of server-side redirect that is handled properly by search engine spiders.

term: One word or phrase from the search query. Words enclosed in double quotation marks (the phrase operator) are treated as a single search term, but other words are treated as individual single-word terms.

term density: Also known as keyword density, the ratio of a particular search query's terms to all terms on a page. For example, if you want your 200-word page to be found for the query "insomnia" and your page contains 12 occurrences of that word, the term density of your page is 6 percent for the term insomnia (12 ÷ 200). Search engines typically consider pages with about 6 to 7 percent term density to be very high-quality pages. (Higher term densities are suspected as spam.)

term frequency: The search metric that describes the number of occurrences of a particular searcher's query term in a Web page. Search engines use the term frequency as a ranking factor in the relevance ranking algorithm for organic search.

term placement: Also known as keyword placement, a measurement of the value of the location of a word on a Web page. All words do not have equal importance on a page. Words in a title or in a heading are more important than words in a body paragraphthese locations of keywords are their placement. Placement and position comprise keyword prominence.

term position: Also known as keyword position, a measurement of how close to the beginning of a Web page element that a word appears. For example, words at the beginning of the body element are usually more important than those that show up later in that same element. Position and placement comprise keyword prominence.

term proximity: Also known as keyword proximity, a measurement of the nearness of different search terms to each other within a matching page. Two words from the searcher's query that are adjacent to each other on a page have the highest proximity, and would tend to be ranked higher than pages where the terms were a paragraph apart, for example.

term rarity: Also known as keyword rarity, a measurement of the frequency that a term is used on all pages across the Web. In a multiple-word search query, some words might be very common, whereas others relatively rare. The search engines give higher weight to pages that contain rare terms than common terms when ranking the results.

term variant: Also known as word variant, a linguistic form of another word. Mouse is a variant of mice, and will is a variant of be. Search engines often treat variants interchangeably for matching purposes unless the searcher requests otherwise.

text analytics: A technique whereby software employs linguistics and pattern detection techniques to impute some larger meaning to the words in a document. Entity extraction and document categorization are two emerging types of text analytics.

title tag: An element of an HTML document that stores the main heading of the entire page, which will be used on the title bar or bookmarks for its page. Search engines pay more attention to what is in the title tag (<title>About Our Company</title>) than any other tag on the page.

toolbar: A program that adds a function on your browser screen you can execute without having to first navigate to a Web site. A search toolbar, for example, allows Web users to enter search queries without first going to a search engine's Web site.

traditional advertising agency: A company that helps clients plan and purchase promotional announcements for TV, radio, and print media, but might cover interactive media, too.

traffic: The Web metrics term to describe the number of visits to a Web site. Web metrics reports will frequently analyze increases or decreases in traffic, and they typically evaluate search marketing success in attracting visits from search engines.

transactional searcher: A user who enters a search query intending to complete a specific task, such as purchasing a product or downloading a file.

trusted feed: A way of sending your data to a search engine, instead of having the spider crawl your site. Some specialty search and almost all shopping search engines require the use of trusted feeds to load your data into their search indexes.

two-way link: Also known as a reciprocal link, a hypertext connection to a page that has a corresponding link back to the source.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The address of a Web page that a visitor can enter into a browser to display that page. For example, www.bn.com is the URL of the Barnes & Noble home page.

unique visitor: Synonymous with visitor, a Web metrics term for a person who visits a Web site at least once in a period of time. If the same person came to a Web site three times in one month, the metrics system would log three visits for that month, but just one unique visitor.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator, the address of a Web page that a visitor can enter into a browser to display that page. For example, www.bn.com is the URL of the Barnes & Noble home page.

URL parameter: The name of a variable in a software program that displays dynamic Web pages. The URL www.domain.com?product=45 contains a parameter named product and a value of 45. The software program uses the parameter and its associated value to decide which content to display on the page.

URL redirect: An instruction to Web browsers to display a different URL from the one the browser requested. Redirects are used when the URL of a page has changed. They allow old URLs to be "redirected" to the current URL, so that your visitors do not get a "page not found" message (known as an HTTP 404 error) when they use the old URL.

URL rewrite: A method of modifying the appearance of your URLs so that dynamic URLs look like static URLs. URL rewrite helps make your URLs more readable for your human visitors, but are also very important in getting spiders to crawl your site.

URL value: The number or character string assigned to a variable in a software program that displays dynamic Web pages. The URL www.domain.com?product=45 contains a parameter named product and a value of 45, which the software program uses to decide which content to display on the page.

usability engineer: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for the user experience. Search marketing often depends on the usability engineer's recognition that search is a critical user scenario that must be considered in all user experience strategy.

user agent: The name of the software program that made a request of your Web server, as shown in your log file. Most browsers generate a user agent name with Mozilla in it, but search engine spiders each have unique names that allow you to see when they have visited.

user experience: The total environment a Web visitor is exposed to that shapes satisfaction with each visit to a site, including content, visual design, navigation, and technology.

value: The number or character string assigned to a variable in a software program that displays dynamic Web pages. The URL www.domain.com?product=45 contains a parameter named product and a value of 45, which the software program uses to decide which content to display on the page.

visit: Synonymous with session, a Web metrics term for a single series of pages viewed from a single Web site. If a visitor comes to a Web site and views five pages before leaving to go to a new site, the metrics system logs five page views, but just one visit.

visitor: Synonymous with unique visitor, a Web metrics term for a person who visits a Web site at least once in a period of time. If the same person came to a Web site three times in one month, the metrics system would log three visits for that month, but just one visitor.

visitor behavior: The study of what Web visitors think and do when using the Web.

visual design: The appearance, often called the look and feel, of a Web page, including page layouts, colors, fonts, images, icons, and buttons.

Web: Known formally as the World Wide Web, an interlinked network of pages that display content or allow interaction between the Web visitor and the organization that owns the Web site.

Web application server: The system software that executes the programs that run a Web site. Web application servers, also know as application servers, are typically used to display dynamic pages.

Web conversion: Any measurable, successful outcome of a Web visitsuch as registering an account or donating to a causebased on the behavior model developed for the Web site's specific goals.

Web Conversion Cycle: A behavior model that describes what visitors do when they come to your Web site and that helps you count your successes as Web conversions.

Web conversion rate: The ratio of Web site visitors to Web conversionshow many people came to the site versus how many successfully achieved the goal (buy the product, sign up for a newsletter, fill out contact information, and so forth).

Web developer: A Web specialist who develops programs or HTML to display Web pages in your visitor's Web browser.

Web governance specialist: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for enforcing your Web site's operational standards.

Web log: 1. A file on your Web server that serves as a record of every action the server has taken. Log files can be analyzed in complex ways to determine the number of visits to your site (by people and by search engine spiders) and the number of pages that they view. 2. Also knows a blog, an online personal journal, a kind of a periodic column on the Web. Some blogs are reminiscent of a private diary, but others resemble magazine columns focused on a particular subject of interest.

Webmaster: The Web specialist of the extended search team responsible for planning and operating the servers that display Web pages when visitors arrive. Search marketing often depends on the Webmaster understanding the importance of Web search so that proper priority will be given to needed search marketing tasks.

Web page: A combination of text and pictures, often augmented by software, that allows visitors to interact with the organizational owners of the Web site.

Web server: The system software that displays static Web pages from HTML files and can execute some programs to create dynamic pages.

Web site: A set of interlinked Web pages managed by a domain team that allows interaction between visitors and the site's owner. For example, visitors speak of "going to Amtrak's Web site," which is at www.amtrak.com. All pages whose URL starts with www.amtrak.com are considered part of the Amtrak Web site.

within the family link: A hypertext link between two sites that search engines consider to be biased, perhaps because they have similar IP addresses, Whois information, or anchor text. Search engines seek to downgrade these links because they are not between neutral partiesthe endorsement that the link provides is not as valuable as others.

word variant: Also known as term variant, a linguistic form of another word. Mouse is a variant of mice, and will is a variant of be. Search engines often treat variants interchangeably for matching purposes unless the searcher requests otherwise.

World Wide Web: Usually abbreviated as WWW, or simply "the Web," an interlinked network of pages that display content or allow interaction between the Web visitor and the organization that owns the Web site.

XML: eXtensible Markup Language, a standard for a markup language, similar to HTML, that allows tags to be defined to describe any kind of data you have, making it very popular as a format for data feeds.