Glossary

A

Affiliate
A related site often linked to your own, to form a "partnership" in the broadest sense.

Affiliate Linking
The provision of reciprocal links between affiliates.

Algorithms
The rules by which search engines rank sites.

Acquisition
The point of acquiring a client, i.e. where a site fulfils its role. Usually a sale, but sometimes a subscription or similar will count.

Automated Spider Engines
Engines which deploy an automated programme to visit and retrieve data from your site.

B

Bid Capping
The technique of setting a limit for maximum bid for use by a bid-listing monitoring service, such as that offered by BMM.

Bidding Engine
Search engines that operate a bid-listing model, such as Overture of Espotting.

Bid Listing
The use of PPC models by search engines in a dynamic, real time auction for search listings. As the auction is never-ending and real time, your listings will change as the bidding level changes. Bids drop of as budgets run dry, or are cancelled, and new bids are added. This makes monitoring and changing of bids essential.

Bid-Listing Monitoring
The act of monitoring activity in bid engines in order to keep a bid listing campaign as competitive as possible.

Bookmarking
The action of marking a webpage in your browser, to make it easy to return to later. Most statistics packages will measure this a new visitor, even though a loyalty relationship has been established.

Brand Infringement
The act of using another company's brand in a non-ethical way, such as inclusion in meta tags, claiming to be that company, or making false statements about that company.


Brand Intelligence
Bigmouthmedia's brand infringement detection and investigation service.

C

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Files that instruct browsers on how to format a document (which fonts to use, how links should behave etc.) Some browsers treat CSS in different ways.

Click
Term used to describe when a user selects a link or search engine listing by pressing the mouse button while holding the pointer over the link

Client-Side
Web-coding that instructs the browser to undertake a task. Opposite to server-side

Cloaking
See IP Delivery

CPA
Cost per Acquisition

CPC
Cost per Click - The actual average cost incurred by the advertiser by the action of a potential customer following a link found on, for instance, a SERP.

CPM
Cost Per Impression (1,000 page views)

Creatives
Titles and Descriptions as they are submitted to directory editors

Crawler-based search engines
Engines that use automated software to index the billions of files online.

Character set
An encoding scheme in which each character is represented by a different binary value. For example, ISO8859-1 is an extended Latin character set that supports more than 40 Western European languages.

D

Data gathering
The process of building profiles of customers by collecting data by their activity. Knowing your customers better will allow you to provide better products and customer service.

Database Presence
The inclusion of database driven content within a site

Design Technology
Technology used in the design process

Directory Creatives
Text written by BMM and submitted to editors

Directory Search
A search made by clicking through directory categories without use of keywords or phrases

Domain
All devices connected to the internet are referenced by their IP address. To make using the internet easier, most will have IP addresses have names associated with them - for instance .com. a domain can have any number of sub-domains prefixed before it, to create a complete domain name

Domain Mapping
The server administration required to 'point' a domain at a specific location or "IP Address"

Data processing
Operations performed on data to provide useful information to users.

E

E-Commerce
The processes of selling online, via a website

Editorial Search Engine
Engines that rank sites using human editors and not by reading meta tags

Emergency Alerts
To signal that an event that is being monitored has occurred, for instance, by email or SMS.

F

Featured Site
The term used by many portals and other search properties that incorporate some element of bid-listing results in their normal search results.

Flash
Macromedia Flash Technology

G

Generic Keywords
General terms relating to subject matter, e.g. marketing (generic) search engine optimization (specific)

Google PageRank
Google's own system for ranking web pages

Googlebot
The agent name of Google’s search engine spider which crawls the web to create its searchable index.

H

Hit
An often mis-used word that refers to any file download from a website, including one hit for the HTML page, and one for each embedded file such as graphics, Flash movies, WAV files etc. Consequently, one page view can generate several hits. Often, the word hit is mis-used where the phrase "visitor session" would be more appropriate.

HTML Coding
Hyper Text Markup Language is a coding Language used to make HyperText documents for use on the Web.

Hyperlink
A link in a document to information within that document or another document. These links are usually represented by highlighted words or images. When a reader selects a hyperlink, the computer display switches to the document or portion of the document referenced by the hyperlink.


I

IP Address
A four-byte numeral (bytes have a value between 0 and 255), which represents an exact address of an internet location, e.g. 255.0.192.47. There are almost 4,300 million unique IP addresses, however this is currently not enough for global use, and often users share IP addresses through a proxy server.

IP Delivery (Cloaking)
A technique whereby false content is presented to search engine spiders in an attempt to gain ranking points. Search engine spiders are recognized by their IP Address.

IT
Information Technology

J

JavaScript
A web coding language with different capabilities to HTML. Not recognized by Search Engine Spiders. Can be client-side, and sometimes server-side.

JHTML
Normal HTML that includes "server-side" JavaScript instructions.

K

Keyword Search
A search made by keying a keyword, or combination of words into a search box on a search engine, directory or portal.

Key Phrases
Combinations of keywords, also called "search terms"

Keyword Search Frequency
Number of search requests for particular keyword

Keywords
The actual words used to describe the site in meta tags and creatives and to find the site using "searches"

Keyword Density
The ratio of the number of occurrences of a particular keyword or phrase to the total number of words in a page. One element of search engine optimization.

Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity measures the closeness between two keywords.

L

Links
An electronic connection between two Web sites (also called "hyper-link").

Link Farm
Web pages deliberately created to increase the number of links between sites and therefore link popularity. A dangerous technique, unpopular with the search engines.

Link Popularity
A method used by search engines to determine the importance of a listed site. Based on the idea that sites with many inbound links is more credible than one without


Logarithmic
A mathematical term for the ratio of values expressed by the base 10 or e. If the base is 10, the logarithm is called common. If the base is e, the logarithm is called natural.

M

Message Boards
Websites that allow visitors to post messages, and for others to reply to them. Unlike email, all discussions take place in public, any anyone can join in. Usually, such discussions are themed by subject matter.

Meta Search Engine
A search Engine that simultaneously refers to several other search properties to retrieve search results. Copernic and Vivisimo are examples.

Meta Tag
HTML coding embedded in the site, to provide spiders with keyword information

N

Newsletter Marketing
The process of building relationships with existing customers and gaining new ones by publishing and mass distributing an email containing features and articles of interest to them.

O

Obfuscation
Using IP Delivery with intent to provide excellent SEO-content to search engine spiders, and deliberately poor SEO-content to users so that any content theft by competitors results in poor search engine listings. Uses IP delivery.

P

Paid Linking
The act of paying for another site to link to your own.

Page View (Impression)
One view of a web page (or banner ad) by a user.

Partner Sites (Bid Engines Terminology)
Relates to bid engines. Partner sites are sites that also display some or all of the bid listing results from that bid engine.

Pay Per Click
A charging model for search engine listings based on a set charge for users clicking on that search engine listing. This model is used by Overture and Espotting in the UK, in a bidding fashion (see bid listing)

Permission Based Email
Since late 2003, to email individuals in Europe as part of a mass distribution, the express, unequivocal permission of the recipient must be obtained first, and this should form basis of an ethical, permission based campaign.

Portals
Web sites which offer some or all of the following: search, email, news, weather, shopping

PPC
See Pay per Click

PR
Public Relations - the process of maintaining and controlling your relationship with the public and your public persona.

Proxy Server
An internet server that allows several users to share one internet connection, reducing the number of IP addresses required. Users are assigned IP Addresses from a limited range, as and when they are required.

Parallel processing
When an array of processors or segments of the CPU work at the same time to speed processing or multi-task.

Q

R

Rank
The position attained on the Search Engines, Directories and Searchable Portals

Rebrand
The process of changing the form of an established brand and managing that change effectively to avoid losing brand recognition.

Reciprocal Linking
The act of two sites linking to each other, for mutual benefit, and with no cost incurred by either site.

Robots
Programme which meta search engines send out to read the metas and/or body html of a submitted site

Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)
Text file placed under e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt. Used to prevent spider trawls of private or sensitive areas and image folders/stats files etc

ROI
Return On Investment - A measure of the success of a marketing campaign in comparison to the money spent on that campaign.

S

Search Engine
A website that provides a list of useful links (SERP's) in response to a text query. Many Search engines have gradually evolved from pure search engines, such as Google, into portals, such as Yahoo!

Search Engine Optimization
A crucial element of search engine marketing - the process of adapting web pages to maximize their effectiveness at matching (and occurring highly in the results pages for) common search phrases on search engines.

Search Engine Log Data
Actual search engine logs, from which BMM retrieve data on search frequency of particular keywords

Search Engine Results Page
The page on which search results are displayed in response to a query submitted by the user

Search Term Evolution
New words or phrases which are relevant to your industry

SEO
Search Engine Optimization - the process of maximizing search property driven traffic to a site by analytical means

SERP's
Search engine results pages

Server-Side
Web coding that instructs a server to undertake a task. Opposite to client-side

SHTML
Normal HTML that includes "server-side" instructions

Slang
The use of alternative or colloquial phrases. In terms of SEM, slang is important to take into consideration when formulating an optimization strategy.

Spam/Spammed
General term relating to practices not approved by the engines and editors

Spiders
See Robots

Style Sheet Errors
Incompatibilities between Cascading Style Sheets designed for one browser, when viewed through another.

Submission
The act of making search engines aware of new web pages and sites. Each search engine will have it's own individual process for doing this.

Server
A process that runs on a host that relays information to a client upon the client sending it a request

T

Top Listings
Listings which rank in the top 30 of results

Targeted Traffic
The concept of directing traffic to a website based on the requirements of that traffic (i.e. matching user "wants" with site provisions.

Traffic Intelligence
Bigmouth media's web-traffic stats analysis service.

U

Unique User
One individual user to a site. This user may visit once or return often, but will still count as one unique user.

URL
Universal Resource Locator (address e.g. http://www.google.com)

User Agent Delivery
Similar to IP Delivery, except that Search Engine Spiders are recognized by their name (user agent) rather than by their IP address. This technique is spam.

V

Viral Marketing
A form of marketing that is self sustaining and self promoting. Usually, the core idea is so appealing that the public take on the role of 'spreading the message' themselves. In its favor is that it is incredibly effective, but control - and even 'ownership' - of the campaign is relinquished.


Visitor Session
A full and complete visit by a user to a website from start to finish of that visit. This is usually considered complete if a user is inactive for a set length of time, most commonly 30 minutes.

W

Web Trawler
See Robots

Web Crawling
A web crawler (also known as a web spider or ant) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches.

W3C
World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body for web standards.

Webmaster
The person responsible for maintaining and updating a Web site

X

XML Trusted Feed Campaign Management
Instead of relying on spiders (robots) to create an index of your website, you can use a XML feed to take control of the process yourself by submitting a feed of your content in a particular format (XML) to participating search engines. It is particularly useful to web-sites whose content changes very quickly of cannot be accessed with conventional spidering technology.

Y

Z