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| Search Engine Terms |
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Heading |
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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. |
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HTTP-EQUIV tag |
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Be 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. |
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Hide Text |
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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 color 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
(Any technique that increases the potential position of a site
at the expense of the quality of the search engine's database
can also be regarded as spamdexing - also known as spamming
or spoofing.). Many search engines can now detect the use of
hidden text, and often remove offending pages from their database
or lower such pages' positioning. |
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HotBot |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.HOTBOT.COM
HotBot provides easy access to the web's four major crawler-based
search engines: AllTheWeb.com/FAST, Google, Inktomi and Teoma.
Unlike a meta seach engine, it cannot blend the results from
all of these crawlers together. Nevertheless, it's a fast, easy
way to get different web search "opinions" in one
place. |
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| I |
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Image Map |
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A set of hyperlinks attached to areas of an
image. This may be defined within a web page, or as an external
file.
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. |
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Inbound Link |
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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. |
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Index |
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The searchable catalog of documents created
by search engine software. Also called "catalog."
Often used as a synonym for search engine. |
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Inktomi |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.INKTOMI.COM
The database used by some of the largest search engines, including
AOL, Hotbot, iWON, MSN, About.com, Espotting, Looksmart and
Overture. Inktomi is also used by Yahoo when no matches are
found in Yahoo's own database. |
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Inforseek |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.INFOSEEK.COM.
One of the largest search engines. New sites are normally added
very quickly, within one or two business days. 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 positioning
algorithm. |
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IP Address Delivery |
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An IP address (Internet Protocol Address) is
a numeric address which identifies your connection to the Internet,
and just as you have an IP address, so do the spiders.
Since you can 'sniff' for the IP address when someone visits
your site, you can use this information to serve specific pages
to the spiders. This method is more complicated than Agent Name
Delivery because it requires you to maintain an exhaustive list
of IP addresses. Also, IP addresses can change and new ones
are always being added.
The advantage to IP Address Delivery is that someone can not
'fake' your IP address. Consequently, it is impossible for anyone
to see the code that is presented to the spider. |
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iWON |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.IWON.COM
iWon's results come from both Overture & Inktomi. iWon gives
away daily, weekly and monthly prizes in a marketing model unique
among the major services. |
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| J |
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Jayde.com |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.JAYDE.COM
Pronounced the same as the word "jade", not as "jay
dee". Located in the eastern U.S.and is privately owned
by iEntry,Inc. Jayde.com is a multi-featured search engine directory
with 1 million plus site listings and currently receives 7,000+
site submissions/day. |
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| K |
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Keyword |
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A word which forms (part of) a search engine
query.
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. |
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Keyword Analysis |
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Keyword analysis is the most important step
in search engine optimization. If you don't target the right
phrases, you cannot get good rankings in the search engines.
It's as simple as that! Keyword analysis identifies keyword
combinations that (1) are likely to bring qualified traffic
that will convert into sales, (2) get enough searches for optimization
to be worthwhile, and (3) don't have so much competition that
it is impossible to get first page rankings. At 76 Web Design,
we pride ourselves on providing expert keyword analysis. |
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Keyword Domain
Name |
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The act of purchasing a domain name that contains
the main keyword or keyword phrase that a site is being optimized
for. Traditionally this entails placing a hyphen between each
word in the domain. This is done because most search engines
read hyphens as a space, thus allowing the domain to contribute
to increased positioning for that keyword. For example, if the
main keyword for your web site was "quarter horses,"
and keyword domain name would be www.quarter-horses.com. |
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Keyword Density |
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Keyword Density is a percentage measure of how
many times a keyword is repeated within text of a page. For
example, if a page contains 100 words and ten of those words
are "quarter horses", then "quarter horses"
is said to have a 10% keyword density. A critical aspect of
creating "friendly" Meta Tags, to rank highly your
keyword density must not be too high or too low. |
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Keyword Density
Optimization |
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The step that follows keyword analysis. Keyword
density optimization ensures that the search engines realize
that your site is "about" the terms that were determined
in the keyword analysis step to be relevant to your prospects.
Keyword density optimization does this by making sure that keywords
appear prominently in title tags, meta tags, alt tags, header
lines, hyperlink text, near the top of the page, and throughout
the page body. |
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Keyword Stuffing |
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The act of repeating keywords or keyword phrases
excessively in body copy, hidden text, meta tags, or any other
code on the site. Originally done in order to increase rankings
in search engines, this tactic is now recognized and penalized
by most of the major search engines. |
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| L |
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Link Building |
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Link building is an essential part of any internet
promotion campaign. Link building is as simple as getting other
sites to link to you. Link building is important, not only because
these links will bring in traffic themselves, but also because
search engines such as Google and AltaVista look at link popularity
as an important part of ranking web sites. |
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Link Popularity,
Page Popularity |
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In short, link popularity is the total number
of qualified web sites linking to your web site. The complete
definition is given by AltaVista: " The connectivity of
pages, including not just how many links there are to a page
but where the links come from: the number of distinct domains
and the "quality" ranking of those particular sites.
This is calculated for the site and also for individual pages.
A site or a page is "good" if many pages at many different
sites point to it and especially if many "good" sites
point to it." |
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LookSmart |
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URL: HTTP:/WWW.LOOKSMART.COM
LookSmart is the global leader in Web directories, with 32 directories
spanning 27 countries and 13 languages. LookSmart has been chosen
as the directory provider for Microsoft's MSN, Excite, AltaVista,
media companies and more than 370 Internet service providers. |
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LYCOS |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.LYCOS.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. |
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Manual Submission,
Hand Submission |
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Real human touching to submit a website to the
proper search engine or Internet directory category. Compared
to automated submission that automates the process through auto-submussion
program.
Manual submission involves many steps with more time consuming
than auto-submission, but it could get more optimum results
than auto-submussion for your site.
Manual submission a MUST for effective website submission to
the major search engines is a vital part of any successful website.
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Meta Tags |
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Meta Tags are a component of the invisible part
of your HTML page, all that stuff between the <head> and
</head> tags. Probably you have only seen the title tag
in there, but there are more hidden content that you never saw
and these are very useful information for search engines like
Google, Inktomi, FAST/AllTheWeb and so on.
Current key Meta tags are website title, Keywords and descriptions,
all of which play a role in the indexing process. Search engines
often use them to categorize and rank your pages. |
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Meta Search Engine |
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A Search Engine that searches multiple search
engines simultaneous and combines the results.
The top Meta Search Engines are IXQuick -The world's most powerful
Meta Search, 15 of the top search engines at the same time and
displays the results very fast; Dogpile -Searches 21 search
engines simultaneous and displays the results 3 search engines
at a time; Metaeureka -Searches across the most important search
engines in world, also has information for each from Alexa. |
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Mirror Sites |
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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. |
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MSN Search |
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URL:HTTP://SEARCH.MSN.COM
MSN Search provides a blend of human-powered directory information
and crawler coverage. In particular, the company has its own
team of editors that monitors the most popular searches being
performed and then hand-picks sites that are believed to be
the most relevant.
MSN Search also relies on search providers for answers to many
of its queries. Usually, it will be human-powered results from
the LookSmart directory and crawler-based results from Inktomi.
MSN uses its own search algorithm to sift through all the listings
from LookSmart to automatically find answers that are believed
to be best. And if you'd prefer to get "pure" Inktomi
results via MSN Search, you'll need to use the MSN Search Advanced
Search page. |
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Mozilla |
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Coined from Mosaic and Godzilla. Mozilla is
a software development initiative that grew out of Netscape's
decision to release the source code for their Netscape Communicator
web browser. Mozilla refers to the collection of software components
and technologies that make up the Mozilla development platform.
Mozilla software components include Navigator, Cookie manager,
Password manager, Form manager, Mail & News, Directory Composer,
Chatzilla and Themes.
Mozilla technologies include XUL (Extensible User Interface
Language) and XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model).
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Newhoo |
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See the Open Directory Project. |
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Noframes |
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The NOFRAMES element contains content that should
only be rendered when frames are not displayed. NOFRAMES is
typically used in a Frameset document to provide alternate content
for browsers that do not support frames or have frames disabled.
When used within a FRAMESET, NOFRAMES must contain a BODY element.
There must not be any NOFRAMES elements contained within this
BODY element. For example: <frameset>
</frameset>
<noframes>
<body>
</body>
</noframes>
A meaningful NOFRAMES element should always be provided in a
Frameset document and should at the very least contain links
to the main frame or frames. NOFRAMES should not contain a message
telling the user to upgrade his or her browser. Some browsers
support frames but allow the user to disable them. |
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Northern Light |
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URL: HTTP://WWW.NORTHERNLIGHT.COM
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. |
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