Meta tags Dictionary
|All the search engine terms
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.
Agent Name Delivery
The process of sending search engine spiders to a tailored page, yet directing your visitors to what
you want them to see. This is done using server side includes (or other dynamic content techniques).
SSI, for example, can be used to deliver different content to the client depending on the value of
HTTP_USER_AGENT. Most normal browser software packages have a user agent string which
starts with "Mozilla" (coined from Mosaic and Godzilla). Most search engine spiders have specific
agent names, such as "Gulliver", "Infoseek sidewinder", "Lycos spider" and "Scooter".
By switching on the value of HTTP_USER_AGENT (a process known as agent detection),
different pages can be presented at the same URL, so that normal visitors will never see the page
submitted to search engines (and vice versa).
In practise this is somewhat simplistic. Some search engines pretend to be "plain mozilla" browsers
to prevent use of agent name delivery. Effective use of agent name delivery can be very difficult, and
may not even work.
How do you spot agent name delivery at work? This is quite difficult, as the owners of web pages
using agent name delivery can control what you see! You may be able to guess that a page is using
this technique if it appears to be indexed incorrectly or the title or description don't match the page
you see, but this could also have been achieved by switching pages after the relevant search engine
has indexed it. If you really want to see the search engines' tailored version of a page, write a
program (e.g. a Perl script) to retrieve the URL with HTTP_USER_AGENT set to each of the
strings used by the search engine spiders. If agent name delivery is in use, one or more of the
retrieved pages will be different to the others!
See also hidden text and IP delivery.
A popular search engine with the largest database on the web, indexing more than 140 million
pages. Its main URL is http://www.altavista.com. Until 1998, this search engine provided the search
facility for Yahoo. Altavista indexes all the words in a web page, and new pages are normally
added to the database fairly quickly, within a couple of working days. You are asked to submit just
the main page of your site. The Altavista spider will then explore your site and index a representative
sample of the pages. Some problems with spamming have been noticed. The use of keyword meta
tags is penalised. Altavista places various alternative options before its search results, including
suggested questions (using the Ask Jeeves service), RealNames. Paid entries are beginning to
appear at the start of the search results.
The default search engine for users of the AOL internet service provider, and hence a busy site. Its
URL is http://www.netfind.com. It is essentially the same engine as Excite.
A small program, often written in Java, which usually runs in a web browser, as part of a web
page. It is possible that the use of such a program may cause spiders and robots to stop indexing a
The name of the Excite search engine's spider.
A meta search engine which can be asked questions in English. This service is also in use at
The provision of one page for a search engine or directory and a different page for other user agents
at the same URL. Various methods can be used, e.g. Agent Name Delivery or IP Delivery.
See Gateway Page.
Common Gateway Interface - a standard interface between web server software and other
programs running on the same machine.
Strictly, any program which handles its input and output data according to the CGI standard. In
practice, CGI programs are used to handle forms and database queries on web pages, and to
produce non-static web page content.
Channels, Channel listings
Lists of links to selected (and usually popular) web sites. The links are maintained by search engines
and directories and are sorted into categories or channels. Sites are picked by a channel editor,
often because of a site's already high ranking with the search engines. Some search engines and
directories allow visitors to nominate sites for inclusion in their channels.
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.
The process of clicking on a link in a search engine output page to visit an indexed site.
This is an important link in the process of receiving visitors to a site via search engines. Good
ranking may be useless if visitors do not click on the link which leads to the indexed site. The secret
here is to provide a good descriptive title and an accurate and interesting description.
The hiding of page content. Normally carried out to stop page thieves stealing optimized pages. See
The listing of only one page from each web site in a search engine or directory's list of search
results. This avoids occupation of all the top results by a small number of web sites and makes the
list of results clearer and more useful to the user.
The HTML <!-- and --> tags are used to hide text from browsers. Some search engines ignore text
between these symbols but others index such text as if the comment tags were not there. Comments
Excite) to provide invisible keywords to some search engines.
An internet link which doesn't lead to a page or site, probably because the server is down or the
page has moved or no longer exists. Most search engines have techniques for removing such pages
from their listings automatically, but as the internet continues to increase in size, it becomes more and
more difficult for a search engine to check all the pages in the index regularly. Reporting of dead
links helps to keep the indexes clean and accurate, and this can usually be done by submitting the
dead link to the search engine.
The removal of pages from a search engine's index.
Removal can occur for various reasons, including unreliability of the machine that hosts a site or
because of perceived attempts at spamdexing.
Descriptive text associated with a web page and displayed, usually with the page title and URL,
when the page appears in a list of pages generated by a search engine or directory as a result of a
query. Some search engines take this description from the DESCRIPTION Meta tag - others
generate their own from the text in the page. Directories often use text provided at registration.
A system which monitors the search engine users' selections from search engine results, counting
which results are clicked on most, and how long visitors spend at that site, so as to improve
relevancy. Used by HotBot and as a plug-in to Apple's new innovative Sherlock search system.
A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages and returning lists of
pages which match particular queries. Directories (also known as Indexes) are normally compiled
manually, by user submission (such as at whatsnew.com), and often involve an editorial selection
and/or categorization process (such as at LookSmart and Yahoo).
A meta search engine. Found at http://www.dogpile.com.
A sub-set of internet addresses. Domains are hierarchical, and lower-level domains often refer to
particular web sites within a top-level domain. The most significant part of the address comes at the
end - typical top-level domains are .com, .edu, .gov, .org (which sub-divide addresses into areas of
use). There are also various geographic top-level domains (e.g. .ar, .ca, .fr, .ro etc.) referring to
The relevance to search engine terminology is that web sites which have their own domain name
(e.g. http://www.nativetongues.com) will often achieve better positioning than web sites which exist
as a sub-directory of another organisation's domain (e.g.
See Gateway Page.
Information on web pages which changes or is changed automatically, e.g. based on database
content or user information. Sometimes it's possible to spot that this technique is being used, e.g. if
the URL ends with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml. It is possible to serve dynamic content using standard
(normally static) .htm or .html type pages, though. Search engines will currently index dynamic
content in a similar fashion to static content, although they will not usually index URLs which contain
the ? character.
See Gateway Page.
A search engine which concentrates on information relating to Europe. The URL is
Regarded as one of the best search engines, with an index of 55 million pages. It can be slow to
index new sites. The URL is http://www.excite.com. Sites using frames must have a NOFRAMES
section in order to be listed. Some spamming has been noticed. Excite previously ignored the
DESCRIPTION meta tag, but is now using this in its listings (although the contents do not affect
relevancy, which is based mainly on the title and body text). The use of gateway pages and hidden
text is allowed. Excite has an audio/video search facility which is a branded component of
RealNetworks' RealPlayer G2.
Fake Copy Listings
Sometimes a malicious company will steal a web page or the entire contents of a web site, re-
publish at a different URL and register with one or more search engines. This can cause a loss of
traffic from the original site if the search engines position the copy higher in the listings. If you find
that someone has stolen your site in this way, write to the company concerned and ask them to
remove the stolen content. Also contact the hosting service used by the company, any company that
benefits from the theft and any search engine(s) concerned. If the thieves refuse to remove the
material or ignore you, obtain legal advice. It is also well worth having printed evidence to support
your claim that your copy of the material was there first, and that you have the copyright! See also
A web page retrieved from a search engine or directory which is not relevant to the query used.
This could be for one of the following reasons:
? The web page contained the keywords entered, but used in the wrong context, with a different
meaning or with a different inter-relationship to that expected.
? The web page is an attempt at spamdexing.
? The search engine has a fault in its database or a bug in its query program.
See Splash Page.
Font and Background Spoofs
Various techniques used to place invisible text in a web page, to improve positioning without
affecting the appearance of the page. These are mostly based on setting the font and background
colours to the same value (e.g. white). Most search engines now detect these tricks.
An HTML technique for combining two or more separate HTML documents within a single web
browser screen. Compound interacting documents can be created to make a more effective web
page presented in multiple windows or sub-windows.
A framed web site often causes great problems for search engines, and may not be indexed
correctly. Search engines will often index only the part of a framed site within the <NOFRAMES>
section, so make sure that the <NOFRAMES> section includes relevant text which can be indexed
by the spiders. If your site uses frames, consider providing a gateway page or adding navigational
links within the framed pages. Submit the main page - the one containing the <FRAMESET> tag to
the search engines. If you use a gateway page, submit this separately.
A web page submitted to a search engine (spyder) to give the relevance-algorithm of that particular
spyder the data it needs, in the format that it needs it, in order to place a site at the proper level of
relevance for the topic(s) in question. (This determination of topical relevance is called "placement".)
A gateway page may present information to the spyder, but obscure it from a casual human viewer.
The gateway page exists so as to allow a web-site to present one face to the spyder, and another to
human viewers. There are several reasons why one might want to do this. One, is that the author
may not want to publicly disclose placement tactics. Another is that the format that may be easiest
for a given spyder to understand, may not be the format that the author wishes to present to his
viewers for aesthetics. Still another may be that the format that is best for one spyder may differ
from that which is best for another. By using gateway pages, you can present your site to each
spyder in the way which is known or thought to be best for that particular spyder.
Also known as bridge pages, doorway page, entry pages, portals or portal pages.
An example gateway page:
A portal partnership between Infoseek and Disney, with search capabilities based on the Infoseek
index, at http://go.com/.
A search engine, powered by Inktomi, which only returns one URL per domain in its search
results. Operates a "pay per click" scheme where websites can pay to increase their relevancy. The
URL is http://www.goto.com.
The name of the Northern Light Search Engine's spider.
Many search engines give extra weight and importance to the text found inside HTML heading
sections. It is generally considered good advice to use headings when designing web pages and to
place keywords inside headings.
Text on a web page which is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to human visitors. This is
sometimes because the text has been set the same colour as the background, because multiple
TITLE tags have been used or because the text is an HTML comment. Hidden text is often used for
spamdexing. Many search engines can now detect the use of hidden text, and often remove
offending pages from their database or lower such pages' positioning.
Text can also be hidden using agent name delivery or IP delivery either to present different text
to different search engine spiders or to hide the real HTML source from competitors. The Stealth
META Tag CGI Script probably uses this technique and is available at
http://www.OutRank.com/stealth.shtml. Another software product which hides HTML source is
called Psyral Phobia and is available at http://www.merlesworld.com/software.htm.
In the context of visitors to web pages, a hit (or site hit) is a single access request made to the server
for either a text file or a graphic. If, for example, a web page contains ten buttons constructed from
separate images, a single visit from someone using a web browser with graphics switched on (a
"page view") will involve eleven hits on the server. (Often the accesses will not get as far as your
server because the page will have been cached by a local internet service provider).
In the context of a search engine query, a hit is a measure of the number of web pages matching a
query returned by a search engine or directory.
One of the largest search engines, indexing 110 million pages. Powered by Inktomi, new
submissions appear to be taking two weeks or longer to appear. The URL is
HyperText Markup Language - the (main) language used to write web pages.
HyperText Transfer Protocol - the (main) protocol used to communicate between web servers and
web browsers (clients).
A set of hyperlinks attached to areas of an image. This may be defined within a web page, or as an
If the image map is defined as an external file, search engines may have problems indexing your
other pages, unless you duplicate the links as conventional text hyperlinks.
If the image map is included within the web page, the search engines should have no problem
following the links, although it's good practice to provide text links too, to aid the visually impaired
and those accessing the web with graphics switched off or using text only browsers.
A hypertext link to a particular page from elsewhere, bringing traffic to that page. Inbound links are
counted to produce a measure of the page popularity. Searches for the inbound links to a page
can be made on Altavista, Infoseek and Hotbot.
See Directory. Also refers to the database of web pages maintained by a search engine or
A meta search engine. Found at http://www.infind.com.
One of the largest search engines. New sites are normally added very quickly, within one or two
business days. The URL is http://www.infoseek.com. Infoseek is one of the few search engines to
treat singular and plural forms as the same word. Very sensitive to page popularity in its
The database used by some of the largest search engines, including Hotbot. Inktomi is also used by
Yahoo when no matches are found in Yahoo's own database.
Similar to agent name delivery, this technique presents different content depending on the IP
address of the client. It is very difficult to view pages hidden using this technique, because the real
page is only visible if your IP address is the same as (for example) a search engine's spider.
A computer programming language whose programs can run on a number of different types of
computer and/or operating system. Used extensively to produce applets for web pages.
An simple interpreted computer language used for small programming tasks within HTML web
pages. The scripts are normally interpreted (or run) on the client computer by the web browser.
Some search engines have been known to index these scripts, presumably erroneously.
A word which forms (part of) a search engine query.
A property of the text in a web page which indicates how close together the keywords appear.
Some search engines use this property for Positioning. Analysers are available which allow
comparisons between pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword densities to
those found in high ranking pages.
Keyword Domain Name
The use of keywords as part of the URL to a website. Positioning is improved on some search
engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.
A phrase which forms (part of) a search engine query.
The buying of search keywords from search engines, usually to control banner ad. placement. All
the major search engines (except EuroSeek and GoTo) insist that keyword purchasing is only used
for banner ad. placement, and doesn't influence search results. The display of banner ads. for
bought keywords can be studied using a service called Bannerstake from Thomson and Thomson
at http://www.namestake.com. which returns the banner ads. displayed when particular queries are
The repeating of keywords and keyword phrases in META tags or elsewhere.
See page popularity.
A file maintained on a server in which details of all file accesses are stored. Analysing log files can
be a powerful way to find out about a web site's visitors, where they come from and which queries
are used to access a site.Various software packages are available to analyse log files, and some are
Sane Solutions provide NetTracker, which is good at analysing queries from log files. A free
program called WebLog is available at http://www.awsd.com. See also the reviews at
A medium-sized directory. The URL is http://www.looksmart.com.
One of the largest search engines, Lycos appears to be moving towards becoming a directory and
is using the Open Directory for some search results. It can be slow to index new sites. The lycos
spider ignores meta tags in pages. Lycos can be found at http://www.lycos.com.
A meta search engine found at http://www.metacrawler.com. Results from various search engines
are summarised in an easy to read form.
A meta search engine found at http://www.metafind.com.
A search of searches. A query is submitted to more than one search engine or directory, and results
are reported from all the engines, possibly after removal of duplicates and sorting. Also the meta
search engine of the same name, found at http://www.metasearch.com.
Meta Search Engine
A server which passes queries on to many search engines and/or directories and then summarises all
the results. Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Infind, Metacrawler, Metafind and Metasearch are
examples of meta search engines.
A construct placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information which is not visible to
browsers. The most common meta tags (and those most relevant to search engines) are
KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION.
The KEYWORDS tag allows the author to emphasise the importance of certain words and phrases
used within the page. Some search engines will respond to this information - others will ignore it.
Don't use quotes around the keywords or keyphrases.
The DESCRIPTION tag allows the author to control the text of the summary displayed when the
page appears in the results of a search. Again, some search engines will ignore this information.
The HTTP-EQUIV meta tag is used to issue HTTP commands, and is frequently used with the
REFRESH tag to refresh page content after a given number of seconds. Gateway pages sometimes
use this technique to force browsers to a different page or site. Most search engines are wise to this,
and will index the final page and/or reduce the ranking. Infoseek has a strong policy against this
technique, and they might penalize your site, or even ban it.
Other common meta tags are GENERATOR (usually advertising the software used to generate the
page) and AUTHOR (used to credit the author of the page, and often containing e-mail address,
homepage URL and other information).
A large directory spread over many different URLs The main URL is http://www.miningco.com.
Multiple copies of web sites or web pages, often on different servers. The process of registering
these multiple copies with search engines is often treated as spamdexing, because it artificially
increases the relevancy of the pages. Filters such as the Infoseek Sniffer now remove multiple
mirrors from the indexes.
People quite often spell words incorrectly when using search engines. Pages which use common
misspellings will quite often receive extra hits, so it is a useful technique to include common
misspellings of words in alt tags, keywords, page names and titles. A similar effect occurs when
spaces are missed out and words are accidentally joined together.
A parallel search engine which offers users their own branded versions. http://www.multicrawl.com.
Multiple Domain Names
The use of several extra domains to provide gateway pages or gateway sites to the main site.
Multiple Keyword Tags
The use of more than one Keywords META tag in order to try to increase the relevancy of the best
keywords on a page. This is not recommended. It may be detected as a spamming technique, or all
but one of the tags may simply be ignored.
It used to be possible to repeat the HTML title tag in the header section of a page several times to
improve search engine positioning. Most search engines now detect this trick.
See AOL Netfind.
See the Open Directory Project.
A search engine with an additional "pay to access" special collection of business, health and
consumer publication articles. The first search engine to ban meta search engines from its
database. The URL is http://www.northernlight.com.
Open Directory Project
A directory project run by thousands of volunteer editors. In principal, this is a very exciting and
powerful way to organise the web. In practice, there have been some problems with the behaviour
of some of the editors, which has caused some initial difficulty for the organisers. Initially known as
NewHoo, the project is now part of Netscape (and therefore of AOL). See
A large business-only directory. The URL is http://www.opentext.com.
Changes made to a web page to improve the positioning of that page with one or more search
engines. A means of helping potential customers or visitors to find a web site. 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. Frames should be avoided (unless navigational links are also
provided within the frames).
A measure of the number and quality of links to a particular page (inbound links). Many search
engines (and most noticeably Infoseek) are increasingly using this number as part of the
positioning process. The number and quality of inbound links is becoming as important as the
optimisation of page content. A free service to measure page popularity can be found at
Used in site statistics as a measure of pages viewed rather than server hits. Many server hits may be
made to access a single page, causing many separate log file entries. Analysis software can
determine that these server hits were generated when a visitor viewed a single page, and group them
together to provide this more useful method of counting visitors. See also Hit and Unique Visitor.
In order not to overburden any particular server, most search engine spiders limit their access to
each server. If your page is hosted on the same server as thousands of other pages, the spider may
never get the time to reach (and index) your page. This can be a powerful argument for having your
See Gateway page. Can also mean Portal Site.
See Gateway page.
A generic term for any site which provides an entry point to the internet for a significant number of
Examples are search engines, directories, built-in default browser or service provider homepages,
sites hardwired to browser buttons, sites offering free homepages, e-mail or personalised news and
any popular (or heavily advertised) sites that significant numbers of people may bookmark or set as
The process of ordering web sites or web pages by a search engine or a directory so that the most
relevant sites appear first in the search results for a particular query. Software such as
PositionAgent, Rank This and Webposition can be used to determine how a URL is positioned for
a particular search engine when using a particular search phrase. The GoHip Search site allows you
to see positioning information from many of the big search engines, displayed all on one page.
A method of modifying a web page so that search engines (or a particular search engine) treat the
page as more relevant to a particular query (or a set of queries).
A word, a phrase or a group of words, possibly combined with other syntax used to pass
instructions to a search engine or a directory in order to locate web pages.
For details of which queries are being used, visit the GoTo.com Search Inventory page. To "spy" on
queries as they're entered, look at the Metaspy page. A summary of what people actually search for
can be found at http://www.synergy-marketing.com/search.html. A free program called Word
Market will collect search terms from the search engines, and is available at
http://www.softwaresolutions.net/free.htm. The Canadian Email Business Network provides a Meta
Tags/Keywords Search Engine at http://www.cebn.com/metatags.htm which allows searches
through thousands of recent search engine queries.
An alternate website address system in operation at Altavista. Brand names used in searches are
mapped directly to the appropriate website, usually because the company owning the brand-name
has paid a fee to RealNames. http://www.realnames.com
The URL of the web page from which a visitor came. The server's referrer log file will indicate this.
If a visitor came directly from a search engine listing, the query used to find the page will usually be
encoded in the referer URL, making it easy to see which keywords are bringing visitors. The referer
HTTP_REFERER environment variable (accessible from scripting languages).
See the paragraph about HTTP_EQUIV under Meta Tag.
The process of informing a search engine or directory that a new web page or web site should be
The method a search engine or directory uses to match the keywords in a query with the content of
each web page, so that the web pages found can be ordered suitably in the query results. Each
search engine or directory is likely to use a different algorithm, and to change or improve its
algorithm from time to time.
Repeating the search engine registration process one or more times for the same page or site. Under
certain circumstances, this is regarded with suspicion by the search engines, as it could indicate that
someone is experimenting with spamming techniques.
The Infoseek and Altavista search engines are particularly vulnerable to spamming because they list
sites very quickly, and are thus easy to experiment with. Both engines de-list sites for repeated re-
submission and Infoseek, for example, does not allow more than one submission of the same page
in a 24 hour period. Occasional re-submission of changed pages is not normally a problem.
Any browser program which follows hypertext links and accesses web pages but is not directly
under human control. Examples are the search engine spiders, the "harvesting" programs which
extract e-mail addresses and other data from web pages and various intelligent web searching
programs. A database of web robots is maintained by Webcrawler.
A text file stored in the top level directory of a web site to deny access by robots to certain pages
or sub-directories of the site. Only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will
read and obey the commands in this file. Robots will read this file on each visit, so that pages or
areas of sites can be made public or private at any time by changing the content of robots.txt before
re-submitting to the search engines. The simple example below attempts to prevent all robots from
visiting the /secret directory:
For more information, please refer to the Altavista robots.txt page.
The name of the Altavista search engine's spider.
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.
A smaller search engine which allows visitors to vote on the relevance of the pages returned by their
queries, thus ranking sites based on the opinions of searchers. Unlike some of the major search
engines, there is good customer support. http://www.searchking.com.
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.
The name of the Infoseek search engine's spider.
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.
Artificially changing search engine results so that, for example, popular queries will return artificially
created listings. Infoseek is currently experimenting with this technique, using a small group of
reviewers to artificially force higher relevance for certain sites.
The name of the spider used by Inktomi.
A large directory. The URL is http://www.snap.com.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Server Side Includes. Used (for example) to add dynamically generated content to a web page.
A CGI script which switches page content depending on who or what is accessing the page. See
agent name delivery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The visitors to a web page or web site. Also refers to the number of visitors, hits, accesses etc. over
a given period.
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
See also hit and page view.
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.
A domain hosted by a virtual server account.
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.
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.
One of the largest search engines. The URL is http://www.webcrawler.com.
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.
Extensible Scripting Language - an XML style sheet language supported by the newer web
browsers Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 5.
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.