Glossary

Paid advertising on Websites (like billboards on a highway).  Largely ignored and becoming less effective over time.
 

A technique for displaying different results which Search Engine spiders (defined below) see that visitors to the site do not see.  A dangerous technique that can cause a Website to be de-listed (defined below).
 

See Spider below
 

Removal of a Website from a Search Engine's index.  Removal can occur because of perceived attempts at ‘spamdexing’ (defined below).
 

One visitor to one page of a Website.  If a visitor visits three pages of your Website, it will be recorded as three hits.
 

Hyper Text Markup Language - the main language used to write web pages.
 

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - the main protocol used to communicate between web servers and web browsers (clients).
 

An area on a webpage that when clicked with the mouse, will jump to another page on the Internet. 
 

A phrase which forms part of a Search Engine’s query

Changes made to a web page to improve the positioning of that page with one or more Search Engine.  A method of helping potential customers or visitors to more easily find your Website. Optimization may possibly involve design/layout changes, but most of the changes are only visible to the Search Engines.
 

Paying Search Engines to show your Website on the sponsored area of their search results.  This technique is becoming less profitable over time as people are learning to look past sponsored links, similar to the way in which people learned to ignore television commercials.  They can be cost effective, but much less effective than a high ‘ranking’.
 

A particular Website’s position in the Search Engines.  Each keyword phrase generates a different ranking in each of the various Search Engines.
 

SearchOptimizers.com’s Search Engine Maintenance Program for keeping Websites ranked high.
 

Search Engine Optimization
 

The alteration or creation of a document with the intent of deceiving an electronic catalog or filing system.  Any technique that increases the potential position of a Website at the expense of the quality of the Search Engine's database can also be regarded as spamdexing - also known as spamming or spoofing.
 

Spamming is also used more generally to refer to the sending of unsolicited bulk electronic mail.  Search Engines derived spamdexing from this term.
 

That part of a Search Engine that surfs the web, storing the Website addresses and indexing the keywords and text of each page it finds.