Search Engine Glossary - Search Engine Terminology You should
Know
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search engine glossary
Here is an ever growing list of search engine terms you should
know. The search engine gloassary has been organized alphabetically.
If you would like to add a term to the list please email us at info@salientmarketing.com.
S - Search
Terms
Scooter
The name of the Altavista search engine's spider.
Search Engine
A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet
web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages which
match particular queries. The indexes are normally generated using
spiders. Some of the major search engines are Altavista, Excite,
Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, Northern Light and Webcrawler. Note that
Yahoo is a directory, not a search engine. The term Search Engine
is also often used to describe both directories and search engines.
Search Term
See Query.
Server
A computer, program or process which responds to requests for information
from a client. On the internet, all web pages are held on servers.
This includes those parts of the search engines and directories
which are accessible from the internet.
Sidewinder
The name of the Infoseek search engine's spider.
Siphoning
The use of various means to steal another site's traffic. Techniques
used include the wholesale copying of web pages (with the copied
page altered slightly to direct visitors to a different site, and
then registered with the search engines) and the use of keywords
or keyword phrases "belonging" to other organisations,
companies or web sites.
Site Hit
See hit.
Skewing
Artificially changing search engine results so that, for example,
popular queries will return artificially created listings.
Slurp
The name of the spider used by Inktomi.
Snap!
A large directory. The URL is http://www.snap.com.
Sniffer
The name of the filter program used by the Infoseek search engine
to prevent spamdexing. It detects multiple mirror pages, font and
background spoofs, multiple title tags, keyword stuffing and possibly
other types of spamdexing.
Spamdexing
The alteration or creation of a document with intent to deceive
an electronic catalog or filing system. Any technique that increases
the potential position of a site at the expense of the quality of
the search engine's database can also be regarded as spamdexing
- also known as spamming or spoofing.
Spamming
See spamdexing. Spamming is also used more generally to refer to
the sending of unsolicited bulk electronic mail, and the search
engine use is derived from this term.
Spider, Spyder
That part of a search engine which surfs the web, storing the URLs
and indexing the keywords and text of each page it finds. Please
refer to the Search Engine Watch SpiderSpotting Chart for details
of individual spiders. See also Robot.
Spidering
The process of surfing the web, storing URLs and indexing keywords,
links and text.
Typically, even the largest search engines cannot spider all of
the pages on the net. This is due to the huge amount of data available,
the speed at which the new data appears, the use of politeness windows
and practical limits on the number of pages that can be visited
in a given time . The search engines have to make compromises in
order to visit as many sites as possible, and they do this in different
ways. For example, some only index the home pages of each site,
some only visit sites they're explicitly told about, and some make
judgements about the importance of sites (from number and quality
of inbound links) before "digging deeper" into the subpages
of a site.
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.
Spoofing
See spamdexing.
SSI
Server Side Includes. Used (for example) to add dynamically generated
content to a web page.
Stealth Script
A CGI script which switches page content depending on who or what
is accessing the page. See agent name delivery.
Stemming
A function of some search engines and directories which allows results
to be returned from some or all keywords based on the same stem
as the keyword entered as a search term. For example, when stemming
is switched on, a search for the word dance will return matches
for any word whose stem is danc-, matching the keywords dance, dancer
and dancing.
Stop Word
A word which is ignored in a query because the word is so commonly
used that it makes no contribution to relevancy. Examples are common
net words such as computer and web, and general words like get,
I, me, the and you.
Submission Service
Any agent which submits your site to many search engines and directories.
Useful to get listed with many of the minor search engines, but
don't rely on such services to get listed with the major search
engines. Many of these services are automatic and run from web sites.
Others run off line. Some are free. Beware of supplying your email
address to the so called FFA (free for all) services - you may receive
lots of spam.
T - Search Terms
Title
The text contained between the start and end HTML tags of the same
name. This text is associated with (but not displayed in) the web
page containing these tags, and is displayed in a special position
(usually at the top of the window) by the web browser.
Title text is important because it normally forms the link to the
page from the search engine listings, and because the search engines
pay special attention to the title text when indexing the page.
Don't confuse this text with heading text within the web page which
often looks like the title. Usually this will be rendered either
using the HTML heading tags or just rendered with a large font size.
Traffic
The visitors to a web page or web site. Also refers to the number
of visitors, hits, accesses etc. over a given period.
U - Search Terms
Unique Visitor
A real visitor to a web site.
Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is
used to determine the number of real people who have visited a web
site.
If for example, someone visits twenty pages within a web site, the
server will count only one unique visitor (because the page accesses
are all associated with the same IP address) but twenty page accesses.
URL
Universal Resource Locator. An address which can specify any internet
resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type
of resource - e.g. http: for web pages, ftp: for file transfers,
telnet: for computer login sessions or mailto: for e-mail addresses.
URL Submission
See Registration.
V - Search Terms
Virtual Domain
A domain hosted by a virtual server account.
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.
A virtual server account is fine for most uses, but will often be
slower to respond than a physically separate server, and physical
access to the machine will seldom be allowed. The cost of a virtual
server account is a small fraction of that needed to run a real
server, mainly because of the expense of the dedicated line needed
to connect the server continuously to the rest of the net.
Voila
A search engine from France Telecom with interfaces in at least
different languages and a mission to become one of the leading international
engines. Their (international) English interface at http://www.voila.com
is produced in collaboration with Reuters, Infospace and Looksmart.
W - Search Terms
Web Copywriting
The writing of text especially for a web page. Similar to the writing
of copy for any other type of publication, good web copywriting
can have a great effect on search engine positioning, so it forms
a major part of optimization.
Webcrawler
One of the largest search engines. The URL is http://www.webcrawler.com.
X - Search Terms
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.
XSL
Extensible Scripting Language - an XML style sheet language supported
by the newer web browsers Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 5.
Y - Search Terms
Yahoo
Similar to a search engine, but with a database generated by hand,
this is the world's most used directory of web sites. The main URL
is http://www.yahoo.com.
It is notoriously difficult to get listed in Yahoo and, once listed,
even more difficult to get your listing changed or to get out! To
increase the odds of getting listed, try the following:
- Select the three categories you want to be listed in very carefully.
Consider the regional categories. Ensure that the categories match
the content of your site.
- Apply to one of their local subsidiaries for your own country
or city.
- Make sure that your site is well-designed and easy to navigate.
- Ensure your site has no dead links.
- Ensure that your pages download quickly.
- Provide good contact information on your site.
- If you manage to get listed, keep the e-mail they send you.
You can e-mail the same person subsequently to get your listing
changed.
Z - Search Terms
There are currently no Z search terms
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