SEO Glossary
ABM
Acronym for Automated Bid Manager.
About.com
A website featuring original guides and references for a very wide variety of topics. In relevant cases, links to external sites are also provided. About.com was marketed as an alternative type of search engine, “The Human Internet” being its tagline.
Above the fold
Refers to the part of a webpage that is immediately visible to a user. The user does not have to scroll down to see content. It is a reference to newspapers where the top part of the page is above the fold.
Absolute link
A link that contains the full address or URL of its destination, for example: .
Accessibility
Refers to the degree of how easy it is to use a website for people with physical, visual, aural, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. An accessible website is said to be easy to use for such people. Accessibility is also one of the criteria for a well-designed website. Accessibility takes advantage of different color schemes, larger fonts, sounds, and graphics to make websites easier to use for people with the above disabilities.
ACH
Acronym for Automated Clearing House Network.
Ad broker
A website or company that provides ads for other websites.
Ad inventory
The total selection of ads that a site can display.
Adobe Photoshop
A popular drawing and photo editing program from Adobe Systems, Inc. Originally for the Apple Macintosh, Photoshop now runs on PCs running Windows. It's arguably the best program of its kind and the most popular among graphic design artists and professionals.
AdSense
A pay-per-click advertising system from Google. Websites can sign up to display AdSense ads on their pages and be paid for every click made on the ads.
Adult word
Any word which is considered vulgar and offensive. The presence of these words on a website may negatively affect its ranking by search engines.
AdWords
A pay-per-click advertising system from Google. Companies and websites can purchase AdWords and have their own ads appear contextually together with search results.
AERT
Acronym for Accessibility and Evaluation and Repair Tools.
Affiliate
In an affiliate program, an affiliate is usually the entity that provides an extra service for a merchant or business. For example, an affiliate could be an online advertiser whose job is to attract customers to a merchant's website.
Affiliate program
A partnership program that involves a third party performing functions like marketing or advertising to attract customers to a merchant or online business site. The affiliate is usually paid on a per-click or per-action basis, such as successful sale or transaction.
Agent name delivery
A technique of delivering content to users based on the type or name of the software they use to browse the Internet. Some sites have browser detection code that determines the type of web browser a user is using.
Aggregator
A program used to collect and retrieve XML data from RSS feeds and display them to the user in the form of an index or list. The user can then choose a feed to browse and see further information on.
AJ
Acronym for Ask Jeeves.
Algorithm
In computer science, an algorithm is a step-by-step sequence of instructions for performing a specific task or solving a problem. In the context of search engine optimization, it may be a set of rules that govern the rankings that are assigned to websites and pages by search engines. These rules are often mathematical in nature.
Altavista
A popular Internet search engine company and the name of their main search engine product.
ALT tags
HTML tags that specify alternate (hence, “alt”) text to display when the mouse is rolled over an image on a webpage. For text-only browsers, ALT text is displayed in place of the images.
Anchor text
The visible text of a hyperlink. To visit the link, the user clicks on the anchor text, which is usually displayed in a different way from ordinary text. In the context of search engine optimization, anchor text may affect a site's relevance and ranking in search engines.
Anonymous FTP
Acronym for File Transfer Protocol. Anonymous FTP is a type of FTP service that can be accessed by anybody, using the username “anonymous” and providing an email address as a password. FTP is a system for downloading or uploading files over the Internet.
AOL Netfind
The search engine of America Online, an Internet company and the one of the largest Internet service providers in America.
Apache web server
A high-quality, open source web server program that powers over 70% of the Internet's websites.
Applet
A small Java program that that can be embedded in an HTML page. These applets are downloaded to a user's PC and run from there. Applets are different from full Java applications in that they are more restricted in the actions they can perform on the user's PC.
Application server
Software that can manage smaller pieces of software, usually in a networked environment. The application server provides access to computing resources such as storage, printers, and other devices or services. The application server also receives requests from users or other computers and relays them to the appropriate application.
Architext Spider
The spider that powers the Excite search engine.
Archie
A software tool that is used for finding files stored on anonymous FTP servers. This has largely been supplanted by Web-based search engines.
ARPANet
Acronym for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. This was the original prototype of the modern Internet, used in the late 60's to the early 70's for military and research purposes and administered by the United States Department of Defense.
ASCII
Acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Ask Jeeves
An Internet parent company of such sites as ask.com, teoma.com, and excite.com
ASP
Acronym for Active Server Pages. ASP is a server-based scripting language that is used to to provide dynamic content and build database driven web sites.
ASP.Net
The next generation of the ASP web scripting language. It provides a complete environment for content management and sharing over the Internet.
ASPX
Acronym for Active Server Page Framework.
ATF
Acronym for Above the Fold.
ATW
Acronym for AlltheWeb, a web search engine.
Automated submission
Using software to automate the process of submitting URLs to search engines for inclusion. Some sites require manual submission through the use of graphical one-time submission codes that a user would have to enter manually.
AV
Acronym for AltaVista.
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