Refers to the rate at which users click through, normally expressed as a percentage. This metric is often used in reference to pay per click (PPC) ads.
See Also: Clickthrough, Pay Per Click
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Chas & Dave
Cockney music artists… oh you can’t stop talking why don’t ya give it a rest – rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…
CGI
Abbreviation for Common Gateway Interface. The CGI allows external software to interface with a web server.
Call to Action
Marketing / Advertising term pertaining to copy which encourages a consumer to engage in a course of within an ad. Typical calls to action include sign up now, call today, click here etc.
Buying Cycle
The buying cycle is a theoretical illustration of how people decide on a particular purchase. Commonly the stages are referred to as follows: identify need, search, evaluate, decide, purchase, feedback. The theory behind it is, that if you can identify where people are in the buying cycle, you will be able to target them more appropriately and ultimately achieve more conversions.
Button Ad
An online ad which is typically 125 x 125 pixels. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452
See Also: Banner Ad, Beyond the Banner
Bulk Submission Services
Services which submit your web pages to search engines.
See Also: Automated Submiting
Browser
Application used to view web pages on the internet, popular examples include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera
Broad Match
One of the keyword matching options available via Google Adwords. As the name suggests this option if selected, will display your ads when the broad matched keyword appears anywhere within a given search query. It will also show for common misspellings and for synonyms.
See Also: Keyword Matching, Phrase Match, Exact Match, Negative Match
Bridge Page
Also referred to as a doorway page or a gateway page. Refers to a page whose sole purpose is SEO. It contains keyword rich copy and a link into a website.
See Also: Doorway Page, Gateway Page
Bread Crumb Navigation
Navigation system which allows users to understand how each page on the site relates back to root areas and ultimately the homepage.
Branded Keywords
This refers to any keywords which contain a brand e.g. ‘Cheap iPod’. When building a paid search campaign many advertisers elect to bid on a variety of generic and branded terms.
Bounce Rate
Normally expressed as a percentage – this is the number of visitors who land or a site and leave without viewing any other pages
Boudica.com
A social news site for women. Similar to Digg – users submit content and are encouraged to vote for the content which they appreciate. http://www.boudica.com/
See Also: Digg
Bot
Short for Robot. A bot is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.
See Also: Crawler, Robot, Spiders, Web Crawler
Bookmarks
A list of links to websites and / or specific content within a given site. Within Internet Explorer bookmarks are stored in ‘Favourites’
Body Copy
Refers to the written content on a web page as opposed to graphics, navigation, menus etc
Blogroll
Blog
An abbreviation for weblog. A blog is (normally) regularly updated and allows it’s readers to interact with the blogger by leaving comments which will normally elicit a response from the writer. Readers can also elect to sign up to RSS feeds. Good blogs will attract links from their readers who find their content relevant / interesting, and / or readers may submit articles of interest to other social media sites such as Digg.
See Also: Weblog
Block Level Analysis
Major search engines continually evolve their algorithms in order to keep one step ahead of unscrupulous SEO’s and to attempt to improve the relevance of their results. One such element is block level analysis. Block level analysis attempts to weight links according to where they appear on the page, and weight them accordingly. As such a link from the content block could be considered as more likely to be a true recommendation than a link from a text link advertisement block.
Blended Search Results
Blended search results incorporate many sources into the results pages of a search rather than simply web pages. The results may include: images, videos, maps, products, news and books. Google call this universal search.
See Also: Universal Search
Black Hat SEO
A term coined for unethical SEO. Essentially this is the practice of optimising a site with a view to deliberately mislead a search engine in order to rank well for search terms. Black hat methods include ‘cloaking’ and ‘keyword stuffing’
See Also: Cloaking, Keyword Stuffing
Bidding
Within an auction environment participants place bids (essentially state how much they are willing to pay for a given item). With reference to paid search advertisers bid (i.e. state the maximum they are willing to pay) on a per click basis for someone who is searching for a particular keyword or search term.
Bid Management Tool
As paid search campaigns become increasingly complex, some advertisers elect to utilise bid management tools to assist them in managing their spend. These tools integrate with analytics packages – to amend bids according to conversion rates and ROI; and / or stock control systems (in the case of e-tailers) to ensure clients are not bidding on terms pertaining to items which are out of stock.
Beyond the Banner
An ad which is not a banner or button e.g. Pop Up or Pop Under. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452
Behavioural Targeting
Targeting of advertising based on previous behaviour. This can be witnessed on when searches are conducted via Google in quick succession.
Bebo
A social networking site founded in January 2005. Bebo stands for blog early, blog often.
Beacon
Coding which enables website owners to track visitor interactions e.g. email sign ups, purchases etc
Banner Ad
An online ad which is typically 468 x 60 pixels. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452
See Also: Button Ad, Beyond the Banner
Banned
When a search engine prevents your content from appearing in any search engine results pages. When this happens via Google this is sometimes referred to as the sandbox.
See Also: Sandbox
Bait and Switch
Term ‘bait and switch’ was originally coined for a tactic utilised by unscrupulous retailers, who would draw customers in with a very low price for a given product, but then tell them that the low-price product was unavailable and attempt to sell them a higher priced alternative. In online marketing this refers to the somewhat dubious practice of creating content which is spidered by search engines and indexed, then switching the content to something else. Or, in a social media context creating content which various people link to, then switching the content once the links are in place.
Automated Submitting
The practice of using automated software to submit your web pages to search engines. NB some search engines attempted to prevent this practice by including submission codes (shown as a graphic) which need to be keyed at the time of submission.
See Also: Bulk Submission Services
http://www.gravytrain.co.uk/glossary/2009/08/bulk-submission-service/See
Authority
One of the many factors which search engine algorithms take into account when deciding how a particular site or page to ranks. A site maybe considered either a topical authority i.e. contain content relevant to one particular subject, or a general authority i.e. contain content relevant to many subjects e.g. Wikipedia
ASP
Stands for Active Server Pages. ASP is a programming language which Microsoft developed for building dynamic web sites.
Ask
Ask was formerly known as Ask Jeeves – and was the first commercial search engine to support search queries in plain English as well as traditional keyword searching. See http://uk.ask.com/?o=312&l=dir
API
A set of defined rules that allows access and interaction with a system
Anchor Text
This is visible part of a hyperlink on a web page which is clickable. The words which form the anchor text can determine search engine ranking for the keywords utilised within the anchor text, as search engines (Google in particular) associate the keywords contained in the anchor text to the page being linked to. In the past manipulation of anchor text has resulted in Google Bombing – famously George W Bush was returned first in search results for the search ‘miserable failure’ – however Google claim they have now fixed this. See Google Bombs for more information
See Back Links, Link Building, Paid Links, Reciprocal Links, Link Farms
Analytics
The science of analysis – businesses often use analytics packages to assist them in making business decisions. Google offer a free analytics package called – Google Analytics see http://www.google.com/analytics/
Alta Vista
One of the earliest search engines – it’s now owned by Yahoo! See http://www.altavista.com/
Alt Tag
An Alt Attribute is sometimes incorrectly referred to as an image’s Alt Tag – see Alt Attribute for definition
Alt Attribute
The Alt Attribute is most commonly used to enter a text description of an image. This is often used for making websites more accessible if users are unable to download graphics or for those with disabilities who use assistive technology. It is also used for SEO purposes as search engines cannot see images.
AllTheWeb
A search engine owned by Yahoo. See http://www.alltheweb.com/
Algorithm
A mathematical calculation used to solve a problem or make a decision. Search Engine’s use algorithms to determine where websites appear for specific search queries.
Daughter Window
An ad which is displayed in a separate window which relates to a banner which is currently being displayed on a web site. Ordinarily the banner will appear first, then a couple of seconds later, the daughter window will appear.
Alexa
Alexa is a site traffic ranking tool which allows you to view your own site stats versus your competitors. This data is collated via Alexa Toolbar users. For more information see http://www.alexa.com/
AJAX
Stands for ‘Asynchronous JavaScript And XML’. Often used on online forms, as it allows for data to be requested and received without the need for reloading the page.
Agent Name
This refers to the name of the crawler, spider or bot (from a search engine) which is currently visiting your site to update their index.