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Search Engine Terms |
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| A |
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Agent Name Delivery |
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All spiders have a name. Such as AltaVista's 'Scooter',
just like all browsers have a name, such as Netscape's 'Mozilla.'
Delivering hence a specific page based on agent name is a rather simple
task. You simply utilize some code that says something to this effect:
if Agent Name equals X or Y or Z, serve page A (the spider page),
else serve page B, where page B would be the viewer's page.
While very effective, agent delivery is not a foolproof way to protect
your code. Someone can easily use an agent name faking program to
report their agent name as that of a spider when visiting your page.
They will then see exactly what is being served. |
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ALT atrribute |
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The prime rule is: Consider what the page looks like
or sounds like when images are not shown. Then, write for each image
an alt text that best works as a replacement."
In HTML authoring, there are very good reasons to include an alt attribute
into every IMG element. This attribute is to displays text to the
user if they have graphics turned off and is also indexed into the
keyword list by many of the big search engines. |
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ALtaVista |
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Main URL: HTTP://WWW.ALTAVISTA.COM.
A pioneer in Web search technology, and a majority owned operating
company of CMGI, Inc. AltaVista's advanced Web search capability is
powered by its algorithmic matching technology. Supported by this
technology, AltaVista offers paid inclusion products, which ensure
that sites are included in its index.
Acquired by Overture for $140 million in cash and stock on Feb. 18,
2003. |
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Announcement Sites |
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Announcement sites is a list of new sites which are
listed for a certain period of time. The time varies from a few weeks
to months and can be useful for announcing new websites or webpages
which you want promoting
Having your web site listed on announcement sites can get some visitors
to your site so it a good idea to submit to some of these, also search
engines visit announcement sites to see what's new. |
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AOL Netfind |
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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. |
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AOL Search |
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External URL: HTTP://SEARCH.AOL.COM.
Internal URL: HTTP:/AOLSEARCH.AOL.COM.
Used mainly by AOL users. AOL Search provides users with editorial
listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same
search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches.
The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content
only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can
search AOL and the entire web at the same time. The "external"
version lacks these links. |
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Applet |
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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 page. |
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Ask Jeeves |
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A Meta search engine which can be asked questions
in English. This service is also in use at Altavista. http://www.askjeeves.com. |
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ASP, Active-Server-Pages |
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A technology that enables you to make dynamic and
interactive web pages. ASP uses server-side scripting to dynamically
produce web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the
web site visitor is using.
ASP pages have the extension .ASP instead of .HTML. Any web pages
containing ASP cannot be run by just simply opening the page in a
web browser. The page must be requested through a web server that
supports ASP, this is why ASP stands for Active Server Pages, no server,
no active pages.
The default scripting language used for writing ASP is VBScript. For
those wish to play around with ASP on your own system you will need
to install Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). |
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| B |
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Bait-and-Switch |
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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. |
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Banner advertising |
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A Banner advertising is a set of images that are identical
in size and shape (a rectangular image). It functions like a billboard
and is displayed on a web site. Visitors can click on these banners
and be transported to your web site immediately. |
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| C |
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Channels, Channel listings |
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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. |
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Chubba |
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URL: HTTP://CHUBBA.WHATUSEEK.COM.
A part of Whatuseek Network. Chubba is a powerful Web Meta search
engine that queries many of the Web's top search engines (including
whatUseek's Web Index). Chubba also provides weather forecasts, Usenet
searching, dictionary and encyclopedia lookup. |
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Click through |
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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. |
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Cloaking |
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The hiding of page content. Normally is carried out
to stop page thieves stealing optimized pages. And Since the page
that is served to the spider is never seen by a human visitor, the
spider page need not be 'pretty.' As a result it can be optimized
to its fullest potential. That means that nobody sees the page except
for the spider, which gives cloaked pages an extremely competitive
advantage over web pages that were optimized to accommodate a professionally
appealing design.
There are two solutions for cloaked pages -Agent Name Delivery and
IP Address Delivery.
Noted please that whatever the case, any time you use cloaking you
take the chance of being labeled a spammer. |
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Clustering |
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The listing of only one page from each website 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. |
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Comment |
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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 are often used to hide JavaScript code from non-compliant
browsers, and sometimes (notably on Excite) to provide invisible keywords
to some search engines. |
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Crawler, Robot, spider, spyder |
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That part of a search engine which surfs the web,
storing the URLs and indexing the keywords and text of each page it
finds. |
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| D |
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Dead Link |
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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. |
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Deep Link |
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Linking to a web page other than a site's home page. |
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De-listing |
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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. |
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Direct Hit |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.DIRECTHIT.COM
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. |
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DMOZ |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.DMOZ.ORG.
Initially known as NewHoo, the project is now part of Netscape (and
therefore of AOL). The Open Directory Project (ODP) is the largest,
most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed
and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
If your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, It may take
anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed
on Portals and search engines using ODP data, including AOL, Netscape,
Google, Lycos, DirectHit, HotBot and Hundreds of Portals and Search
Engines. |
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Dogpile |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.DOGPILE.COM.
A meta and multisearch engine which feeds your request to a number
of other search engines on the net and returns their responses. |
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Doorway Page |
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Also known as signpost, portal or portal page, gateway
page, jump page, bridge page or entry page. Refers to a web page specially
designed as an entrance to a website. It has been designed primarily
for search engines, not for human beings, so it may present information
to the spider, but obscure it from a casual human viewer. The doorway
page is one way to get your website presenting one face to the spider
while another to human viewers. |
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Dynamic content |
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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. |
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| E |
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Euroseek |
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URL: HTTP://EUROSEEK.COM
A search engine which concentrates on information relating to Europe.
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Excite |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.EXCITE.COM
Regarded as one of the best search engines, with an index of 55 million
pages. It can be slow to index new sites. 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. |
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| F |
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False Drop |
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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 is an attempt at spamdexing.
- 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 search engine has a fault in its database or a bug in its query
program. |
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FFA sites |
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Free For All sites. FFA site is a list of links to
websites which is constantly modified as new links are added. When
you submit to FFA's your site is put on top of the list and as others
get added you keep going down the list until your site is removed.
The time period for being removed will vary on how many new sites
are added to the list, it could be a few days to weeks or months. |
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Flash |
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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. |
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Font and Background Spoofs |
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Techniques used to place invisible text in a web page
to improve positioning without affecting the appearance of the page.
Mostly based on setting the font and background colors to the same
value (e.g. white). Most search engines now detect these tricks. |
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Frames |
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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. |
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GO.COM |
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URL: HTTP://GO.COM
A portal partnership between Infoseek and Disney, with search capabilities
based on the Infoseek index. |
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GOTO |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.GOTO.COM
Search by keyword or browse by category at http://www.Overture.com
formerly known as GoTo. Overture is an extremely popular paid placement
search engine that provides ads to many of the search engines listed
above. |
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GOGUIDES |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.GOGUIDES.ORG
A privately funded independent directory, GoGuides is known to the
webmaster community as a volunteer operation. Listing sites by rating.
Allows editors to place banners on their topics. Two submission solutions:
Free Standard Submission service and Paid Express Submission service.
GoGuides.Org is made of former Guides from Go.com. On July 13th 2001,
GoGuides.Org breached a 2500 sites benchmark submitted to the directory.
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