Glossary

A/B Testing
In A/B testing, you unleash two different versions of a keyword, advertisement, website, web/landing page, banner design or variable and see which performs the best. You test version A vs. version B to see how different versions preform.

Above the Fold
With reference to the top part of a newspaper, the term is used in Internet marketing to describe the top part of the page that the user can see without scrolling down.

Advertising Network
an aggregator or broker of advertising inventory for many websites. Advertising networks are the sales representatives for the Web sites within the inventory.

Affiliate
A marketing partner that promotes your product or services under a pay-for-results agreement.

Algorithm
The process a search engine applies to web pages so it can accurately produce a list of results based on a search term. Search engines regularly change their algorithms to improve the quality of the search results. Hence search engine optimisation tends to require constant research and monitoring.

API
Application Programming Interface

BTF
Below the Fold

Backlinks
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization (SEO) because some search engines, give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks. Sites with better backlink counts usually rank better in SERPs.

Banner
Banners are the 468-by-60 pixels ad space on commercial Web sites that are usually “hot-linked” to the advertiser’s site.

Blog
A blog is an online journal or “log” of any given subject. Blogs are easy to update, manage, and syndicate, powered by invividuals and/or corporations and enable users to comment on postings.

Bot
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers

Bounce Rate
This shows a percentage of entrances on any given page that resulted in an exit from the page without entering any other page on the site.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Percentage of times a user responded to an advertisement by clicking on the ad button/banner. At one time the granddaddy of Web-marketing measurements, click-through is based on the idea that online promotions that do what they’re intended to do will elicit a click. CTR is one metric Internet marketers useto measure the performance of an ad campaign.

Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Content Network
A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads.

Contextual Advertising
Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page’s content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.

Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of your clicks that generate sales or leads.. This number is given by dividing the number of sale/leads by the number of clicks you send to the offer. For example, if 100 clicks generated 100 visitors to your site, and they generate 5 sales/leads then your conversion rate would be 20%

Cookie
A file on your computer that records information such as where you have been on the World Wide Web. The browser stores this information which allows a site to remember the browser in future transactions or requests. Since the Web’s protocol has no way to remember requests, cookies read and record a user’s browser type and IP address, and store this information on the user’s own computer. The cookie can be read only by a server in the domain that stored it. Visitors can accept or deny cookies, by changing a setting in their browser preferences.

CPA
Cost Per Action. A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.

CPC
Cost Per Click. Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

CPL
Cost Per Lead

CPM
CPM is the cost per thousand for a particular site. An advertiser that charges every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.

CPS
Cost Per Sale

CPT
Cost Per Transaction

Crawler
A program used by a search engine to “crawl” links on the Internet to find and index content. Also called a robot or spider. Can be used to identify and differentiate between types of crawlers indexing your site.

Default Page
The default page setting should be set to whatever the default (or index) page is in your site’s directories. Usually, this will be ‘index.html’, but on Windows IIS servers, it is often ‘Default.htm’ or ‘index.htm’. This information allows Google Analytics to reconcile log entries such as ‘http://www.example.com/’ and ‘http://www.example.com/index.html’, which are in fact the same page. Without the Default Page information entered correctly,these would be reported as two distinct pages. Only a single default page should be specified.

DNS – Domain Name System
Translates domain names to IP addresses. When a domain name is delegated to a name server, the domain name system ensures the name can be translated to the IP address of the web server.

Doorway Page
A page that is optimized to rank well for a given keyphrase. Also known as a Hall Way or Tunnel Page.

Domain
A domain is the main subdivision of Internet addresses, the last three letters after the final dot, and it tells you what kind of organization you are dealing with. There are six top-level domains widely used: .com (commercial) .edu (educational),.net (network operations), .gov (US government), .mil (US military) and .org (organization). Other, two letter domains represent countries; thus;.uk for the United Kingdom, .dk for Denmark, .fr for France, .de for Germany, .es for Spain, .it for Italy and so on.

EPC
Earnings Per Click. This number is given by dividing your revenue earned by the number of clicks you sent to the offer. For example, if you send an offer 100 clicks and earn $5.00 then your EPC would be $0.05

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. A protocol that allows the transfer of files from one computer to another. FTP can also be used as a verb.

Geo Targeting
Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Googlebot
Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with “Googlebot”; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)
GIF (pronounced “gift”) is a graphics format that can be displayed on almost all web browsers. It is a common compression format used for transferring graphics files between different computers. Most of the “pictures” you see online are GIF files. They display in 256 colors and have built-in compression. GIF images are the most common form of banner creative.

GIF, Animated
A GIF animation tool that creates sequences of images to simulate animation and allows for transparent Background colors. Animated GIF’s can generate higher response rates than static banners.

Hit
A hit is simply any request to the web server for any type of file. This can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, and many other file types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips.
Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid popularity gauge, but rather is an indication of server use and loading.

Home Page
The page designated as the main point of entry of a Web site (or main page) or the starting point when a browser first connects to the Internet. Typically, it welcomes you and introduces the purpose of the site, or the organization sponsoring it, and then provides links to the lower-level pages of the site. In business terms, it’s the grabber. If your home page downloads too slowly, or it’s unclear or uninteresting, you will probably lose a customer.

Host
An Internet host used to be a single machine connected to the Internet (which meant it had a unique IP address). As a host, it made available to other machines on the network certain services. However, virtual hosting has now meant that one physical host can now be actually many virtual hosts.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language is a coding language used to make hypertext documents for use on the Web. HTML resembles old-fashioned typesetting code, where a block of text is surrounded by codes that indicate how it should appear. HTML allows text to be “linked” to another file on the Internet.

Hypertext
Any text that that can be chosen by a reader and which causes another document to be retrieved and displayed.

HTTP
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, the format of the World Wide Web. When a browser sees “HTTP” at the beginning of an address, it knows that it is viewing a WWW page.

HTTPS
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol Secure.

Hyperlink
This is the clickable link in text or graphics on a web page that takes you to another place on the same page, another page or a whole other site. It is the single most powerful and important function of online communications. Hyperlinks are revolutionizing the way the world gets its information.

ICANN
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global non-profit corporation formed to oversee a select range of Internet technical management functions currently managed by the U.S. Government, or by its contractors and volunteers.
Online: http://www.icann.org

Impression (Ad Impression or Page Impression)
The ad impression is the metric a site uses for measuring inventory. Different definitions exist for this term:

1. The viewing of a page or ad(s) by the user. The assumption is that the page or ad images were successfully downloaded and the user viewed the page or ads on the page are recorded whether or not a user clicks on an ad.
2. The request for a page or ad. Agencies usually collect a fee for every thousand impressions (hence the term CPM cost per thousand).

Inbound Link
An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links important because many search engine algorithms use the quality and quantity of inbound links to measure the popularity of a Web page.

Internet
A collection of approximately 60,000 independent, inter-connected networks that use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from ARPANet of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Net,” is a worldwide system of computer networks providing reliable and redundant connectivity between disparate computers and systems by using common transport and data protocols.

Interstitial
Means “something in between” and is a page that is inserted in the normal flow of content between a user and a site. An Interstitial Ad is an “intrusive” ad unit that is spontaneously delivered without specifically being requested by a user. Blocking the site behind it, Interstitial Ads are designed to grab consumers’ attention for the few nanoseconds it takes them to close the window. Interstitial’s can be full pages or small daughter windows. Also referred to as “pop-ups.”

IP address
Internet Protocol address. Every system connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, which consists of a number in the format A.B.C.D where each of the four sections is a decimal number from 0 to 255. Most people use Domain Names instead and the resolution between Domain Names and IP addresses is handled by the network and the Domain Name Servers. With virtual hosting, a single machine can act like multiple machines (with multiple domain names and IP addresses).

Java
Java is an object oriented programming language created by Sun Microsystems that supports enhanced features such as animation, or real-time updating of information. If you are using a web browser that supports Java, an applet (Java program) embedded in the Web page will automatically run.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG (pronounced “jay peg”) is a graphics format newer than GIF which displays photographs and graphic images with millions of colors, it also compresses well and is easy to download. Unfortunately, not many browsers currently support it, so don’t use it for your logo.

JS
Java Script

Keyword
A word — or often phrase — used to focus an online search. A keyword is a database index entry that identifies a specific record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the web. Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords. Unless the author of the
web document specifies the keywords for her document (this is possible by using meta tags), it’s up to the search engine to determine them. Essentially, this means that search engines pull out and index words that are believed to be significant. Words that are mentioned towards the top of a document and words that are repeated several times throughout the document are more likely to be deemed important.

Link Bait
Link bait is a form of spam in the form of editorial content posted on a blog or Web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites.

Link Building
The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can reciprocal linking, entering barter arrangements, and may include buying links.

Link Popularity
A measure of inbound links. Several search engines have included this factor into their algorithms, the most notable being Goggle with their trademarked PageRank.

Mailing List
Online a mailing list is an automatically distributed email message on a particular topics going to certain individuals. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list by sending a message via email. There are many good professional mailing lists, and you should find the ones that concern your business.

Meta Data
Data about Data

Meta Search Engine
A search engine which gathers the results of other search engines to provide an wider range of results
Online: Meta Tag Generator

Multivariate Testing
A process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous A/B tests performed on one page at the same time.

Opt in/Opt out
An email marketing promotion that typically gives consumers an opportunity to “opt in” (taking action to be part of the promotion) or to “opt out” (taking action to not be part of the promotion). Marketers can be sensitive about the distinction, although many are secretly anxious about the day when email, like
real-world direct mail, becomes an opt-out medium.

Page
All Web sites are a collection of electronic “pages.” Each Web page is a document formatted in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that contains text, images or media objects such as RealAudio player files, QuickTime videos or Java applets. The “home page” is typically a visitor’s first point of entry and features a site index. Pages can be static or dynamically generated. All frames and frame parent documents are counted as pages.

Page Views
Number of times a user requests a page that may contain a particular ad. A page is defined as any file or content delivered by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), javascript (.js) and style sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition.

Pay-per-Click
An advertising pricing model in which advertisers pay agencies based on how many consumers clicked on a promotion. Condemned by advertisers and agencies alike for its many marketing vagaries and technical loopholes.

Pay-per-Impression
An advertising pricing model in which advertisers pay agencies based on how many consumers see their promotions.

Pay-per-Sale
An advertising pricing model in which advertisers pay agencies based on how many consumers actually buy something as a direct result of the promotion. Despised by agencies for the wretched accountability it brings to their lives.

PHP
Hypertext Preprocessor (file.php)

Plug-in
A program application that can easily be installed and used as part of a Web browser. Once installed, plug-in applications are recognized by the browser and its function integrated into the main HTML file being presented.

PNG
Portable Network Graphics (file.png)

PPC
Pay Per Click. A type of campaign or service which applies a CPC price to relevant keyword phrases to easily and accurately calculate positioning, online marketing costs and ROI for your website. As opposed to a Maintenance or Optimization SEO campaign, the client only pays for the traffic that is provided, based on the agreed CPC.

PPC Management
The process of managing PPC accounts, campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.
Online: PPC Management

Podcast
A method of publishing audio files to the Internet for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

Portal
A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as email, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience. Also known as a “gateway to the Internet”.

Push
Is the delivery (”pushing of’) of information that is initiated by the server rather than being requested (”pulled”) by a user. Pointcast is the most well known push service that pushes information based on the users profile.

Query
A request for information, usually to a search engine. A key word or phrase that instructs the search engine to find documents related to the user’s request.

Quality Score
A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that
make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.

Rank
An ad’s standing in comparison to other ads, based on the graphical click-through rate. Rank provides advertisers with information on an ad’s performance across sites.

Reach
Unique Web users that visited the site over the course of the reporting period, expressed as a percent of the universe for the demographic category. Also called unduplicated audience.

Referrer
The URL or webpage that the user clicked on to arrive at your web page. This is often recorded in the log files via the web server software.

Registration
A process for site visitors to enter information about themselves. Sites use registration data to enable or enhance targeting of ads. Some sites require certain registration in order to access their content. Some sites use voluntary registration. Fee-based sites conduct registration in the form of a transaction (take a credit card to pay for the content). A registered user is a user who visits a Web site and elects, or is required, to provide certain information. Non-registered users may be denied access to a site requiring registration.

Reputation Management
Reputation management is the process of controlling, managing, and tracking an entity’s online reputation for its brand name, or for an individual name, or keyword.

Robot
See spider or crawler.

Robots.txt
A file place on your website directory tree which gives instructions to robots/spiders as to what content to access.

ROAS
Return on Ad Spend

ROI
Return on investment = (Revenue – Cost)/ Cost, expressed as a percentage. A term describing the calculation of the financial return on a Internet marketing or advertising initiative that incurs some cost. Determining ROI and the actual ROI in Internet marketing and advertising has been much more accurate than television, radio, and traditional media.

RSS
Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication.

Search Advertising
An advertiser pays for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword. These are usually text ads, which are displayed above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing
The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click advertising (PPC), as well as using all other areas and services offered by Search Engines.

Session
A series of transactions or hits made by a single user. If there has been no activity for a period of time, followed by the resumption of activity by the same user, a new session is considered started. Thirty minutes is the most common time period used to measure a session length.

SEM
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Management

SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the ongoing process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.

Social Media
A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or My Space, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Simpy, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.

Spider
A term used to describe search engines such as Yahoo and Alta Vista, because of the way they cruise all over the world wide web to find information. It is a software program which combs the web for new sites and updated information on old ones, like a spider looking for a fly.

Splash Page
A bridge page between a banner advertisement and an advertiser’s Web site that provides product information and hotlinks. Splash pages are replacing many home pages — particularly on sites more involved with news and publishing — as gateways into web content. They start with a bigger “splash,” more graphics and timely information, and change often — like the cover of a magazine

Stickiness
A measure used to gauge the effectiveness of a site in retaining individual users.

Submission
Refers to content submitted or suggested to a search engine or directory. Several search engines and directories supply forms for users to complete to suggest or pay for content to be included. In most cases the actual submission should be optimized to include relevant keyword phrases to increase the
chances of being found in a search.

Tags
Individual keywords or phrases for organizing content

Title
An element of a web page which appears in the top left of most browsers. It is also the part of a directory submission that represents the title of the website. Arguably one of the most important parts of SEO is ensuring an optimized title or unique titles across all pages of a website.

Traffic
Generally measured by the amount of visitors to a website. Hitwise Search Marketing measures search generated traffic separately by recording referrals from known search engines and directories.

Unique Users
The total number of different users, or different computer terminals which have visited a Web site. This is measured using advanced tracking technology or user registration.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator, an HTTP address used by the World Wide Web to specify a certain site. This is the unique identifier, or address, of a web page on the Internet. URL can be pronounced “you-are-ell” or “earl.” It is how web pages, ftp’s, gophers, newsgroups and even some email boxes are located.

Viral Marketing
Any advertising that propagates itself. When Hotmail users send email, they unwittingly infect the recipient with the tag line at the bottom of the message.

Virus
These are programs that can be downloaded onto your computer or network from the Internet. Some are harmless, others are programmed to destroy your system, trash your files and disable your software. No kidding. So be careful. Use anti-virus programs. They take a few extra minutes every day to use, but the protection is worth it.

Visits
A sequence of requests made by one user at one site. If a visitor does not request any new information for a period of time, known as the “time-out” period, then the next request by the visitor is considered a new visit. To enable comparisons among sites, I/PRO uses a 30-minute time-out.

Web 2.0
A term that refers to a second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.

Widget
A widget is a live update on a website, webpage, or desktop. Widgets contain personalized neatly organized content or applications selected by its user.

Wikipedia
A multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. With rare exceptions, its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Since its creation in 2001, the name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia.

Wiki
A web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website

WYSIWYG
What you see is what you get. A type of editor used for creating web pages.

Yahoo Slurp
Yahoo web crawler. Instructions to Yahoo Slurp can be directed in the robots.txt file. Googlebot statistics can be viewed with web analytics software, on webserver logs, and in Google webmaster tools.

Zine
Magazines that are published digitally, rather than on paper. Some are mainstream, others are oddball and cover almost every topic imaginable.