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Glossary
Ever been confused with web talk? below is a glossary of terms you may have come across.
Cache
Your browser stores everything it reads on the user's hard disk. Every HTML page, every graphic. The next time it comes to pull down the same page, it uses the cached version, which is much faster - no need to download again via the Internet.
Directory
A Web site containing links to other sites which are organized into various categories. Examples of directories are Yahoo!, Open Directory, LookSmart, etc. The most well-known directory is Yahoo!. Many people feel that Yahoo! is more important to traffic-building than any single engine. The advantage of the directories is that the Web sites listed are usually of a higher, more uniform quality. They are selected by humans, so it's not as easy to get in as it is for Search Engines.
Domain Name
A network name associated with an organization (e.g., google.com or yahoo.com). Domain names are organized in a hierarchy, with each level separated by a "dot." Common organizational types are commercial (.com), government (.gov), and network (.net). In the U.S., most Internet addresses follow a standard format: name of server.name of organization.type of organization.
E-commerce
Electronic commerce (also known as ebusiness.). Buying and selling products and services via the Internet.
Dynamic Content
Information in Web pages which changes automatically, based on database or user information. Search engines will index dynamic content in the same way as static content unless the URL includes a ? mark.
Flash
A Web-based animation application that transforms Web pages into a swirl of action, colors, and excitement. Without broadband access, this involves a long loading time (and the potential loss of visitors who are unwilling to wait). As well, a Flash application means no content for Search Engines spiders to crawl and rank (which means that you can't take advantage of free Search Engine traffic).
Hits / Pages / Visits / Visitors
When someone comes to your Web site, that's a visitor. No matter how long he stays on your site, he's still the same visitor. And that visit counts as one visit. If he goes away and comes back tomorrow, that's a new visit. But it does not count as a new visitor - he would best be counted as a repeat visitor. During one of his visits he starts at your home page, then goes to another. That's two page views (i.e., he has seen 2 different HTML documents). And that's not the same as hits. Each page view might trigger many hits - if that HTML page has 5 graphics on it, then the HTML document itself and each graphic are registered as a line in the log file. Each line in a log file counts as a hit. So that's a total of six hits.
So a visitor can account for many visits. A visit can have several page views. And each page view triggers several hits (unless it's only an HTML document and words, in which case a page view would create only one hit).
Keyword
A word or phrase that you type in when you are searching for information in the search engines.
Meta Description Tag
The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to provide a short description of the contents of the page. Some search engines will display the text present in the Meta Description tag when the page appears in the results of a search. Including keywords in the Meta Description tag can improve the search engine ranking of a page for those keywords. However, some search engines ignore the Meta Description tag.
Meta Keywords Tag
The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to provide alternative words for the words used in the body of the page. The Meta Keywords tag is becoming less and less important in influencing the search engine ranking of a page.
Meta Refresh tag
The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to display a different page after a few seconds. If a page displays another page too soon, most search engines will either ignore the current page and index the second page or penalize the current page for spamming.
Meta Tag
An optional HTML tag that is used to specify information about a Web page. Some search engines read the information contained within the tag and use it to index the page. There are several meta tags, but the most important for search engine indexing are the Description and Keywords tags. The Description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The Keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.
Spider
A software that visits Web sites and indexes the pages present in those sites. Search engines use spiders to build up their databases. Examples: The spider for Google is called Googlebot, the spider for Yahoo! is called Yahoo! Slurp.
Splash page
A media-rich (usually Flash) entry page to a Web site. Usually, these pages take much time to load, and provide no real additional value to the site ("cool" is not a necessity for making the sale). Using a splash page means a good portion of impatient visitors won't wait for your page to load, but will resort immediately to the BACK button.
URL
The Uniform Resource Locator is used to specify the address of Web sites and Web pages. Having keywords in the URL can improve the search engine ranking of the page in a few of the search engines. However, most search engines do not give any preference to a page which has the keyword in the URL.
