Technology Definitions

404, I haven't a clue

4G, Fourth Generation

Above The Fold, The term is used on the net to describe the top part of the page that the user can see without having to scroll down.

ADJACENCY, A property of the relationship between words in a search engine (or directory) query. Search engines often allow users to specify that words should be next to one another or somewhere near one another in the web pages searched.

ADN, Any day now

AFAIK, As far as I know

AFK, Away from keyboard

Aggro, Aggravated or Upset

Algorithm, A Set Of Rules That A Search Engine Uses To Rank The Listings Contained Within Its Index. No Search Engine Reveals How Its Own Algorithm Works In Order To Protect Itself From Competitors And Spammers

Algorithmic Results/Organic Listings, listings that search engines do not sell. Sites appear because a search engine considers the site to have important to be included without the exchange of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Any Key, when asked by help desk to press "any key" they mean press any key on your keyboard. There isn't a key that says
"Any" Such As ESC, Alt, Ctrl.

A-Yo, Greeting As In "Hey" Or "Whats Up"

B4N, Bye For Now

Backlinks (Inbound Link), All the links pointing at a particular web page. Also called inbound links

Back-Up, This is the activity you start doing on a regular basis after all your files have been accidentally erased or when your computer crashs and your asked told by Tech Support - "Did you back up your files to the server or on disk? We can retrieve them from there."

Badload, A Drunk

Badonkadonk, Used to described buttocks of exceptional quality and bounce.

Barney, An Unattractive Male.

BBL, Be Back Later

BEG, Big Evil Grin

BIOYIOP, Blow It Out Your I/O Port

Boot, Taking Out Your Frustration By Restarting Your Computer It's Being Annoying And So That You Can Tell Tech Support "Yes i've Already Tried Restarting My Computer And It Didn't Slove The Problem."

Word & Phrase Definitions

Caffeine, Rather It's Coffee Or Soda It's A Vital Ingredient In 97% Of Call Computer User's Daily Diet.

Client, A Computer, program or process which makes requests for information from another computer, program or process. Web browsers are client programs. Search engine spiders are (or can be said to behave as) clients.

Cloaking, The act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will see. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking.

CMO, Chief Marketing Officer

Contextual Link Inventory, Contextual or content inventory is generated when listings are displayed on pages of web sites (usually not search engines), where the written content on the page indicates to the ad-server that the page is a good match to specific keywords and phrases. Often this matching method is validated by measuring the number of times a viewer clicks on the displayed ad.

Conversion Rate, the association between guests to a web site and sales proceedings "conversion," or request to receive more information expressed as a percentage. If a web site has 50 visitors and 10 of them convert, then the site has a 20 percent conversion rate.

Cost Per Click (CPC) (Also Ppc - Pay Per Click), Advertiser pays an agreed amount for each time someone clicks on a link leading to their web site.

CPM, An advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times their ad is seen by a consumer, regardless of the consumer's subsequent action. Heavily used in print, broadcasting and direct marketing, as well as with online banner ad sales. Cpm stands for "cost per thousand," since ad views are often sold in blocks of 1,000. The m in cpm is latin for thousand.

Crawler / Spider / (Sometimes Called A Robot), Component Of Search Engine That Gather Listings By Automatically "Crawling" The Web. A Search Engine's Crawler (Also Called A Spider Or Robot), Follows Links To Web Pages. It Makes Copies Of The Web Pages Found And Stores These In The Search Engine's Index.

Delisting, When pages are removed from a search engines index. This may happen because they have been banned or for other reasons, such as an accidental glitch on the search engine's part.

Directories, A search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web.

Dogpile, A Meta Search Engine.
Doorway (Or Gateway) page, a web page created expressly in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine's non-paid listings and which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often see only some enticement on the doorway page leading them to other pages (example: "click here to enter)

E-mail Address
The new communication tool used to break up with your significant other.

FLOPPY
The state of your wallet after purchasing a computer and all of the nifty accessories and software.

Gigabyte, A Gigabyte (Pronounced GIG-A-Bite With Hard g's) Is A Measure Of Computer Data Storage Capacity And Is Roughly A Billion Bytes. Gigabyte Is A Value Of Space On A Computer Hard Drive

GMTA, Great Minds Think Alike

Go.Com, a portal partnership between infoseek and disney

Graphical Search Inventory, banners, and other types of advertising units which can be synchronized to search keywords. Includes pop-ups, browser toolbars and rich media.

HTML
enHanced Techniques Meeting Losers

Id Ten T Error, I D 1 0 T (Idiot)

Index, the collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

Jargon
Online slang written by teenagers that look like it came from anther planet.

Keywords (Search Terms), the words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Landing Page, the specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a search engine. Marketers attempt to improve conversion rates by testing various landing page creative, which encompasses the entire user experience including navigation, layout and copy

Laptop, What dogs and cats call they're chair. A small portable computer that some people call a ball and chain or they're life.

Link Text, the text that is contained within a link. For example, search engine is a link that contains the link text "Search Engine."

Meta Description Tag, allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.

Meta Keywords Tag, allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag.

Meta Robots Tag, allows page authors to keep their web pages from being indexed by search engines, especially helpful for those who cannot create robots.txt files. The robots exclusion page provides official details.

Meta Search Engine, meta search engine: a search engine that gets listings from 2 or more search engines, rather than through its own efforts.

Meta Tags, Information placed in a web page not intended for users to see but instead which typically passes information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.

Nemesis
The people who work in the IT Department and Help Desk Companies.

OBSOLETE
The computer you bought a week ago

OCR, Optical Character Recognition

Optimization, Changes made to a web page to improve the ranking of that page with one or more search engines. Optimization may involve design/layout changes, new text for the title-tags, meta-tags, alt- attributes, headings, and changes to the first 200-250 words of the main text. A large image map at the top of a page should be moved further down the page.

Organic Listings, listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Organic Listings / Algorithmic Results, listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Outbound Links, Links on a particular web page leading to other web pages, whether they are within the same web site or other web sites.

Paid Inclusion, Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine's index in exchange for payment, though no guarantee of ranking well is typically given.

Paid Listings, Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

Paid Placement, Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers.

Pay-For-Performance, Term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click, stressing to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that "perform" in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM based ads, where ads cost money, even if they don't generate a click.

PEBCAK, Problem Exists Between Chair & Keyboar

Portable Computers / PDA Phones
A device invented to force employees to work at lunch, at home, while sick with the flu, on vacation, on business trips.

Position / Rank, How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine results.

Query / Search Terms / Key Words, The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Rank / Position, How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine results.

RC1, Release candidate 1 - the first release in a new software package

Realnames, An alternate website address system in operation at altavista.

Reciprocal Link, A link exchange between two sites.

Registration / Submission, The act to submitting a url for inclusion into a search engine's index. Unless done through paid inclusion, submission generally does not guarantee listing.

Robot / Crawler, A file used to keep web pages from being indexed by search engines. The robots exclusion page provides official details. Also - component of search engine that gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web.

ROI, stands for "return on investment" and refers to the percentage of profit or revenue generated from a specific activity. For example, one might measure the roi of a paid listing campaign by adding up the total amount spent on the campaign (say $200) versus the amount generated from it in revenue (say $1,000). The roi would then be 500 percent.

RSS, Acronym for really simple syndication - still in its infancy in terms of being a promotional/revenue generating strategy. Search engines such as yahoo, google & msn commenced spidering rss feeds; it's probably time to start examining and experimenting with rss web feeds now. Hink of it as a distributable "what's new" for your site.

RTFM, Read the f-ing manual

Search Engine, Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information.

Search Engine Marketing, The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), The act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing itself has taken over for this.

Search Terms (Keywords ), The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for.


SEMPO, Search engine marketing professional organization, a non-profit, formed to increase the awareness of and educate people on the value of search engine marketing.


SERPS (Results Page ), After a user enters a search query, the page that is displayed, is call the results page. Sometimes it may be called serps, for "search engine results page."
Shopping Search, Shopping search engines allow shoppers to look for products and prices in a search environment. Premium placement can be purchased on some shopping search indices.

Siphoning, The use of various means to steal another site's traffic.

Spider / Crawler / (Sometimes Called A Robot), Component of search engine that gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot), follows links to web pages. It makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index.

Splash Page, Similar to a gateway page but provides an initial display which must be viewed before a visitor reaches the main page. This usually acts as a kind of "opening title" sequence, and can be extremely annoying.
Submission / Registration, The act to submitting a URL for inclusion into a search engine's index. Unless done through paid inclusion, submission generally does not guarantee listing.

STATE-OF-THE-ART
The latest and greatest computer you can't afford.

The Long Tail, If you achieve good rankings on 2, 3 or even 4 semi-popular key phrase combinations, you'll most likely do very well in terms of traffic.

UG, "User group"

Unix, An operating system

Virtual Server, An account on a hosting company server, usually linked to its own domain. This provides an inexpensive way to run a web site with its own top level domain, and is usually indistinguishable from having a separate physical server, except that the virtual server may share an IP address with other virtual servers on the same machine.

VP of SE, Vice President of Search Engines

WWW
World Wide Wait

What Is Keyword Saturation?, Saturation levels do play a crucial role in the ranking of your pages. Opinion on keyword saturation is to aim for around 3 - 5%; but be cautious.

Wombat, Waste of money, brains & time

XML, Extensible markup language. A new language which promises more efficient data delivery over the web. Xml does nothing itself - it must be implemented using 'parser' software or xsl.

XML Feeds, A form of paid inclusion where a search engine is "fed" information about pages via xml, rather than gathering that information through crawling actual pages. Marketers can pay to have their pages included in a spider based search index either annually per URL or on a CPC basis based on an xml document representing each page on the client site.

XSL, Extensible scripting language - an xml style sheet language supported by the newer web browsers internet explorer 5 and Netscape 5