without requiring a new page to load.
Absolute link - A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at.
Example absolute link
Cool Stuff
Example relative link
Cool Stuff
Alexa - Amazon.com owned search service
AllTheWeb - Search engine which was created by Fast, then bought by Overture, which was bought by Yahoo.
AltaVista - Search engine bought out by Overture prior to Overture being bought by Yahoo
AOL - Popular web portal which merged with Time Warner.
Ask - Ask is a search engine owned by InterActive Corp. They were originally named Ask Jeeves, but they dumped Jeeves in
early 2006. Their search engine is powered by the Teoma search technology, which is largely reliant upon Kleinberg's concept
of hubs and authorities
Behavioral Targeting - Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently
searched for mortgages then am later reading a book review the page may still show me mortgage ads.
Block Level Analysis - A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down
into smaller blocks for further link analysis.
Canonical URL - The canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines.
Examples of URLs which may contain the same information in spite of being at different web addresses:
* http://www.seobook.com/
* http://www.seobook.com/index.shtml
* http://seobook.com/
* http://seobook.com/index.shtml
* http://www.seobook.com/?tracking-code
CGI - Common Gateway Interface - interface software between a web server and other machines or software running on that
server. Many cgi programs are used to add interactivity to a web site.
Cloaking / IP delivery - Displaying different content to search engines and searchers
Clustering - Clustering can also refer to a technique which allows search engines to group hubs and authorities on a specific
topic together to further enhance their value by showing their relationships.
Co-citation - In topical authority based search algorithms links which appear near one another on a page may be deemed to be
related to one another. In algorithms like latent semantic indexing words which appear near one another often are frequently
deemed to be related.
Copyright - The legal rights to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work.
Cookie - Small data file written to a user's local machine to track them. Cookies are used to help websites customize your
user experience and help affiliate program managers track conversions.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets is a method for adding styles to web documents.
Note: Using external CSS files makes it easy to change the design of many pages by editing a single file. You can link to an
external CSS file using code similar to the following in the head of your HTML documents
Cybersquatting - Registering domains related to other trademarks or brands in an attempt to cash in on the value created by
said trademark or brand.
Dayparting - Turning ad campaigns on or off, changing ad bid price, or budget constraints based on bidding more when your
target audience is available and less when they are less likely to be available.
DNS - Domain Name Server or Domain Name System. A naming scheme mechanism used to help resolve a domain name / host name to a
specific TCP/IP Address.
Everflux - Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.
In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted
to a constantly updating index Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.
FFA - Free for all pages are pages which allow anyone to add a link to them
Frames - A technique created by Netscape used to display multiple smaller pages on a single display. This web design
technique allows for consistent site navigation, but makes it hard to deep
Fuzzy Search - Search which will find matching terms when terms are misspelled (or fuzzy).
GAP - Google Advertising Professional is a program which qualifies marketers as being proficient AdWords marketers.
Google Bombing - Ranking page well for a specific search query by pointing hundreds or thousands of links at it with the
keywords in the anchor text.
Google Bowling - Knocking a competitor out of the search results by pointing hundreds or thousands of low trust low quality
links at their website. Typically it is easier to bowl new sites out of the results. Older established sites are much harder
to knock out of the search results.
Google Dance - In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since
Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance. Major
search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.
Google OneBox - Portion of the search results page above the organic search results which Google sometimes uses to display
vertical search results from Google News, Google Base, and other Google owned vertical search services.
Google Sitelinks - On some search results where Google thinks one result is far more relevant than other results (like
navigational or brand related searches) they may list numerous deep links to that site at the top of the search results.
Google Supplemental Index - Index where pages with lower trust scores are stored. Pages may be placed in Google's
Supplemental Index if they consist largely of duplicate content, if the URLs are excessively complex in nature, or the site
which hosts them lacks significant trust.
Hilltop - Algorithm which ranks results largely based on unaffiliated expert citations.
HITS - Link based algorithm which ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.
Hijacking - Making a search engine believe that another website exists at your URL. Typically done using techniques such as a
302 redirect or meta refresh.
.htaccess - Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files.
IDF - Inverse Document Frequency is a term used to help determine the position of a term in a vector space model.
IDF = log ( total documents in database / documents containing the term )
Inktomi - Search engine which pioneered the paid inclusion business model. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! at the end of 2002.
JavaScript - A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.
Link Baiting - The art of targeting, creating, and formatting information that provokes the target audience to point high
quality links at your site.
Link Bursts - A rapid increase in the quantity of links pointing at a website.
Link Churn - The rate at which a site loses links.
Link Equity - A measure of how strong a site is based on its inbound link popularity and the authority of the sites providing
those links.
Link Hoarding - A method of trying to keep all your link popularity by not linking out to other sites, or linking out using
JavaScript or through cheesy redirects.
Link Popularity - The number of links pointing at a website.
Link Rot - A measure of how many and what percent of a website's links are broken.
Looksmart - Company originally launched as a directory service which later morphed into a paid search provider and vertical
content play.
LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing is a way for search systems to mathematically understanding and representing language based on
the similarity of pages and keyword co-occurance. A relevant result may not even have the search term in it. It may be
returned based solely on the fact that it contains many similar words to those appearing in relevant pages which contain the
search words.
Mechanical Turk - Amazon.com program which allows you to hire humans to perform easy tasks that computers are bad at.
Meta Refresh - A meta tag used to make a browser refresh to another URL location. A meta refresh looks like this
Meta Search - A search engine which pulls top ranked results from multiple other search engines and rearranges them into a
new result set.
Multi Dimensional Scaling - The process of taking shapshots of documents in a database to discover topical clusters through
the use of latent semantic indexing. Multi dimensional scaling is more efficient than singular vector decomposition since
only a rough approximation of relevance is necessary when combined with other ranking criteria.
Natural Language Processing - Algorithms which attempt to understand the true intent of a search query rather than just
matching results to keywords.
Poison Word - Words which were traditionally associated with low quality content that caused search engines to want to demote
the rankings of a page.
Portal - Web site offering common consumer services such as news, email, other content, and search.
Precision - The ability of a search engine to list results that satisfy the query, usually measured in percentage. (if 20 of
the 50 results match the query the precision is 40%) Search spam and the complexity of language challenge the precision of
search engines.
Proximity - A measure of how close words are to one another.
Query Refinement -
* Google OneBox: promotes a vertical search database near the top of the search result. For example, if image search is
relevant to your search query images may be placed near the top of the search results.
* Spell Correction: offers a did you mean link with the correct spelling near the top of the results.
* Inline Suggest: offers related search results in the search results. Some engines also suggest a variety of related
search queries.
Registrar - A company which allows you to register domain names.
Reputation Management - Ensuring your brand related keywords display results which reinforce your brand. Many hate sites tend
to rank highly for brand related queries.
Reverse Index - An index of keywords which stores records of matching documents that contain those keywords.
Scumware - Intrusive software and programs which usually target ads, violate privacy, and are often installed without the
computer owner knowing what the software does.
Search History - Many search engines store user search history information. This data can be used for better ad targeting or
to make old information more findable.
Search engines may also determine what a document is about and how much they trust a domain based on aggregate usage data.
Many brand related search queries is a strong signal of quality.
SEO Copywriting - Writing and formatting copy in a way that will help make the documents appear relevant to a wide array of
relevant search queries.
Search Marketing - Marketing a website in search engines. Typically via SEO, buying pay per click ads, and paid inclusion.
Siphoning - Techniques used to steal another web sites traffic, including the use of spyware or cybersquatting.
Splash Page - Feature rich or elegantly designed beautiful web page which typically offers poor usability and does not offer
search engines much content to index.
Spyware - Software programs which spy on web users, often used to collect consumer research and to behaviorally targeted ads.
SSI - Server Side Includes are a way to call portions of a page in from another page. SSI makes it easier to update websites.
Stemming - Using the stem of a word to help satisfy search relevancy requirements. EX: searching for swimming can return
results which contain swim.
Teoma - Topical community based search engine largely reliant upon Kleinberg's concept of hubs and authorities. Teoma powers
Ask.com.
Trackback - Automated notification that another website mentioned your site which is baked into most popular blogging
software programs.
Due to the automated nature of trackbacks they are typically quite easy to spam. Many publishers turn trackbacks off due to a
low signal to noise ratio.
TrustRank - Search relevancy algorithm which places additional weighting on links from trusted seed websites that are
controlled by major corporations, educational institutions, or governmental institutions.
Usenet - A search service which is focused on a particular field, a particular type of information, or a particular
information format.
Vertical Search - A search service which is focused on a particular field, a particular type of information, or a particular
information format.
Viral Marketing - Self propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, and word of mouth
marketing channels.
Wordnet - A lexical database of English words which can be used to help search engines understand word relationships.
XHTML - Extensible HyperText Markup Language is a class of specifications designed to move HTML to conform to XML formatting.
XML - Extensible Markup Language is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML, used to make it easy to syndicate
or format information using technologies such as RSS.
