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301 Redirect:

A redirect is a technique for forwarding one URL to another URL. It’s a useful and dangerous tool to seamlessly forward visitors and search engine spiders to a new URL for one of several reasons including if a website needed to change its domain or a time sensitive page like a contest has expired and is no longer relevant. 301 redirects, unlike 302 redirects, also transfer PageRank and SEO value to the new URL.

A/B Testing:

A method of advertising testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples. This method has been recently adopted from direct marketing within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails and landing pages.

Advertising Network:

A service where ads are bought centrally through one company, and displayed on multiple websites that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by ads served on their site.

Affiliate Program:

A Web-based pay-for-performance program designed to compensate “affiliate” partner web sites for driving qualified leads or sales to a “merchant” web site. Typically, the merchant pays a percentage of any sales resulting from any click through (via banner or text link) to their Web site from an affiliate partner’s Web site. Service providers like Commission Junction help track and manage payments.

Algorithm:

A mathematical formula used by search engines to determine which web sites in their database to present in search results, in which order. While search engine algorithms change regularly, primary on-page factors include keyword density and source code optimization. The primary off-page factor is link popularity.

Anchor Text:

The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX):

A group of inter-related web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness and interactivity of web pages achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server “behind the scenes” so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server.

Attention Profile (APML):

An Attention Profile consists of all the information online about what users read, write, share and consume. APML, or Attention Profiling Mark-up Language, allows users to alter and share their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows the exchange of reading lists between News Readers.

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrapping in business is to start a business without external help/capital. Startups that bootstrap their business fund development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses. Generally at the start of a venture a small amount of money will be set aside for the bootstrap process. A startup company can grow by reinvesting profits in its own growth, if its bootstrapping costs are low and return on investment is high.

Bounce Rate:

This is the rate of visitors that enter your site, and leave within the first 5 seconds (as calculated by Google Analytics) without viewing another page.

Blog/Web Logs:

A self-published, managed or maintained Web diary. Usually updated daily or weekly, blogs have historically been personal, but gained notoriety after the 2004 election as an influential media outlet. Companies now use blogs to extend their brand and improve their organic search visibility.

Breadcrumb:

A breadcrumb is a navigational trail used on web pages to display where the page sits in the hierarchy of the website. Each level of the breadcrumb is usually a link back to the referenced page. An example breadcrumb looks like this: “Home > Category > Product Page”

Business Incubator:

Programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies or startups through an array of business support resources and services that are developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and though its network of contracts. Incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure, and in the types of clients they serve. Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a start-up company will stay in business for the long term: Historically, 87% of incubator graduates stay in business.

Buzz Marketing:

See “viral marketing.”

Canonical:

Similar to the 301 redirect, URL canonicalization is an HTML tag to help eliminate duplicate copies of the same page on a website. Unlike rediercts, canonical URL tags are only used for search engine spiders to signal that the duplicate pages have a single source.

Click Through Rate (CTR):

The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who view the link or text ad.

Cloaking:

In terms of search engine marketing, this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. It can be done in many technical ways. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine’s index. As for approved cloaking, this generally only happens with search engines offering paid inclusion program.

Click Fraud:

A type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.

Content Management System (CMS)

A software platform that aids in the management of content on a Web site.

Content Network:

A group of websites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. Examples include Google Adsense or the Yahoo Publisher Network.

Contextual Advertising:

Advertising that is targeted to a web page based on the page’s content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.

Contextual Link Ads/Inventory:

To supplement their business models, certain text-link advertising networks (like Google) have expanded their network distribution to include “contextual inventory”. Most vendors of “search engine traffic” have expanded the definition of Search Engine Marketing to include this contextual inventory. Contextual or content inventory is generated when listings are displayed on pages of Web sites (usually not search engines), where the written content on the page indicates to the ad-server that the page is a good match to specific keywords and phrases. Often this matching method is validated by measuring the number of times a viewer clicks on the displayed ad. These ads typically do not perform as well as traditional text ads on search engines, but the lower cost justifies the expense.

Co-citation:

Co-citations are links used to establish similarity between two web pages. If sites A and B are either linked to or cited by site C, then they may be related to each other even though they may not directly link to each other. For an example, say your blog about banking is linked to from 1,000 other websites that also link to WellsFargo.com. Search engines will use the existence of 1,000 co-citations to establish relevance between your blog and Wells Fargo.

Conversion:

A site visitor completes a desired action. Generally a download, signup, purchase, etc.

Conversion Funnel:

A series of steps or actions a user must take in order to complete the desired conversion action (i.e. eCommerce shopping cart)..

Conversion Rate:

The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a “conversion,” such as a sale or request to receive more information. This metric is often expressed as a percentage.

Cost Per Action (CPA):

A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

Cost Per Click (CPC):

System where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click someone makes on a link leading to their web site. Also known as PPC or paid listings. A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM):

System where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times their ad is seen by a consumer, regardless of whether the user clicks on the ad or not.. This term is heavily used in print, broadcasting and direct marketing, as well as with online banner ad sales. CPM stands for “cost per thousand,” since ad views are often sold in blocks of 1,000. The M in CPM is Latin for thousand.

Crawler/Spider/Robot:

Component of search engine that indexes web sites automatically. A search engine’s crawler (also called a spider or robot), copies web page source code into its index database and follows links to other web pages.

CSS:

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is part of HTML code that outline the layout of different elements of your site such as your header, content area, widgets, etc.

Directories:

A type of search engine where listings are gathered or reviewed by humans, rather than by search engine crawlers. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words and placed in a particular category. The largest and most popular directory site is Yahoo!

Doorway/Landing/Gateway/Bridge/Jump Pages:

A web page created expressly in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine’s organic/non-paid listings and which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often see only some enticement on the doorway page leading them to other pages, or they may be seamlessly redirected to a real page within the existing web site. With cloaking, visitors may never see the doorway page at all. Several search engines have guidelines against doorway pages, though they are more commonly allowed in through paid inclusion programs.

Entrepreneurship:

The act of being an entrepreneur is an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. The most obvious form of entrepreneurship is that of starting new businesses.

Geo-Targeting:

Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Googlebot:

Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Googlebots begin with “Googlebot”; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.

GoogleDex:

GoogleDex is the score given to a term based on the number of pages that Google has indexed and posted as results for that term.

Image Alt Text:

Alt tags are used in the HTML code to describe images on a web page. Since search engines cannot see images, the use alt text along with other factors to determine what the image is and how relevant it is. An example of alt text: <img src=”image23095.gif” alt=”Latest piture of BP oil spill”>

Index:

The collection of information (contained in a large database) a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

Indexed Pages:

Indexed pages refers to the number of pages of your site that search engines have found, crawled and stored in their index. A page cannot rank for a search term unless it is in the search engine index.

Inbound/Back Link:

An inbound is a hyperlink to a particular web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a web page. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site B would have an inbound link from Site A. To see how many inbound links your site or page has, use the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool.

Internal Links:

Unlike inbound links, internal links is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. An example would be if Site A added a link to the About Us page from the homepage of Site A. Internal links are valuable for SEO, although not considered to carry the same weight as an inbound link from an external source.

Invisible Web:

A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn’t indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

Keyword:

A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

Defines and/or measures progress towards company goals.

Keyword Density:

The frequency of repetition of a given keyword or phrase within body text on a web site. The higher the frequency (measured in percentages) the greater the likelihood of a higher ranking in search results. In FBA’s case, you’ll notice a higher density of the phrase “search engine marketing” within the web site, as that is the most relevant phrase used to describe the service offering.

Link Bait:

The process of getting quality websites to link to your websites, in order to improve search engine rankings. Any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.” Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature and can impact visibility in search results. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements.

Link Development:

The act of requesting or securing inbound links to your web site. Also see Link Popularity and Inbound/Back Links.

Link Popularity:

A raw count of how “popular” a page is based on the number of backlinks/inbound links it has. It does not factor in link context or link quality, which are also important elements in how search engines make use of links to impact rankings.

Listings:

The information that appears on a search engine’s results page in response to a search. See “Results Page.”

Local Search:

Search engine results constrained by region/location, based on the searcher’s location or intent. With the addition of Web 2.0 capabilities, local search results may include business ratings, reviews, maps and driving directions.

The Long Tail:

First coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. In relation to search engine marketing (SEM) the Long Tail refers to the keyword phrases that are 3+ keywords in length or highly detailed and specific that may generate low volumes of searches and traffic, but add up to generate a majority of traffic for sites with deep content or product SKUs.

Meta Search Engine:

A search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines, rather than through its own efforts.

Meta Tags:

Information placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page. Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags.

Meta Description Tag:

Allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.

Meta Robots Tag:

Allows page authors to keep their web pages from being indexed by search engines, especially helpful for those who cannot create robots.txt files. The Robots Exclusion page provides official details.

Mobile Search:

An evolving branch of information retrieval services that is centered on the convergence of mobile platforms and mobile handsets or other mobile devices. The services allow users to find mobile content interactively on mobile websites, and mobile content shows a media shift toward mobile multimedia.

Multivariate Testing:

A process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous split tests or A/B tests performed on one page at the same time. See A/B testing definition for more information.

NoFollow:

A link element used in the HTML code of a link to tell search engines to not pass any SEO value or PageRank through the link. It was created to prevent spam in blog comments that the blog author could not control. An example of the nofollow code: <a href=”http://www.example.com/”rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>

NoIndex:

Noindex is a HTML tag that tells search engine spiders to prevent storing the page in a search engine index. It can be used for private information that you would not want anyone to find through a search engine. Found in the <head> section of the web page, an example code looks like: <meta content=”noindex” />

Online Public Relations:

see SEM PR for a full description

Online Reputation Management (ORM):

The act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating undesirable search engine results or mentions in online media for a company or product. Techniques include generating new content and creating posts on existing content.

OpenSearch:

A collection of technologies that allow publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. It is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format. Originally developed by Amazon and recently adopted by Yahoo!, OpenSearch relies on abstract-based microformats (dataRSS, eRDF, FOAF, GeoRSS, hCard, hEvent, hReview, hAtom, MediaRSS, RDFa, XFN, etc.) to integrate syndicated content into search results.

Organic/Natural Listings:

Listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered “organic” even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Outbound Links:

An outbound link is a link from your site to an external site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site A would have an outbound link to Site B.

PageRank:

Is a link analysis algorithm, assigning a numerical weighting for the total value and trust accumulated by your entire site (all pages) based on the quantity and quality of the links pointed at your site.  Links are used by the search engines as the main factor determining trust, relevancy and the importance of a page and domain based on the quantity and quality of the links that point to it. Every link on the web is treated as a “vote” and that the more votes a page has, the more value its vote’s pass.

Page Views:

The number of times a page (an analyst-definable unit of content) was viewed.

Paid Inclusion/Pay For Inclusion (PFI):

The act of purchasing the ability to be indexed by search engines. Unlike PPC, position within search results are not guaranteed, but unlike organic SEO, PFI guarantees a level of frequency in indexing and enables optimization and submission of large numbers of pages within a site. The end result is ideally a higher position in search results for larger, database-driven sites.

Pay Per Call:

The ability to track offline sales through unique toll-free phone numbers. Currently available on FindWhat and CitySearch properties, this service is ideal for offline-based businesses like plumbers, contractors and other service industries.

Pay Per Click (PPC):

Stands for pay-per-click. See “Cost Per Click” and “Paid Placement.”

Paid Listings:

Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

Pay For Performance:

Term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click, stressing to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that “perform” in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where fees are based on impressions or views instead of clicks.

Paid Placement:

Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. Search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee. Overture and Google are the largest networks, but second tier players like FindWhat are gaining in popularity as CPC prices increase. Portal or site sponsorships are also a type of paid placement.

Quality Score:

A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.

Rank:

How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine results. Generally, sites on the first page (or within the first 10 listings) generate significant visibility and traffic. Overall, saying a page is “listed” only means that it can be found within a search engine in response to a query, not that it necessarily ranks well for that query. Also called position.

Reciprocal Link:

A mutually-agreed upon link exchange between two sites. See “Link Development.”

Results Page:

The page that is displayed after a search phrase is typed into a search engine. Also referred to as search engine results page or SERP.

Robots.txt:

Robots.txt is a protocol that determines the accessibility of specific pages on a domain to search engine spiders. The robots.txt file tells search engine spiders which pages to disallow any crawling or indexing before the spider even reaches the page. Try typing in any domain followed by /robotx.txt and see one for yourself: http://www.google.com/robots.txt

Return On Investment (ROI):

The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads. Historically associated with sales and marketing efforts; when applied to SEM efforts, refers to numerical, percentage or ratio of revenue generated over total cost of activities. ROI typically factors in paid placement and associated management costs, but a more detailed analysis may factor in profit (true cost). If ROI is measuring paid placement only, it is typically referred to as return on ad spend (ROAS).

RSS Feeds:

Real simple syndication (RSS) is a relatively new and easy way to distribute content via the Internet. For email marketers, it is a way to distribute messages while avoiding spam filters. Typical applications include email newsletters, blogs or even Web sites. Similar to newsgroups, RSS feeds require a special “reader” like Bloglines or NewsGator to view messages.

Search Advertising:

Also called paid search. An advertiser bids for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword. These are usually text ads, which are displayed above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.

Search Engine:

Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered. Top tier search engines include Google, MSN, Teoma and Yahoo!

Search Engine Marketing (SEM):

The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings (search engine optimization), purchasing paid listings (PPC management) or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities (i.e. affiliate programs, shopping feeds or link development). The goal is to improve a website’s position in search engine results. SEM involves both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.

Search Engine Marketing Public Relations (SEM PR):

The art of leveraging traditional PR materials to increase visibility and traffic via a hybrid of interactive PR strategies & tactics, including SEO, PPC and SMO. Tactics may include press release optimization and distribution, article syndication and social media outreach.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.

Search Engine Positioning (SEP):

Synonymous with SEO, search engine positioning is the act of altering a web site to perform well in organic or natural search results.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP):

The page searchers see after they’ve entered their query into the search box. This page lists several web pages related to the searcher’s query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.

Search Engine Submission:

The act of submitting specific URLs to popular search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! to ensure the web page gets spidered and indexed.

Search Personalization:

The ability to personalize SERPs based on personal profile information, settings or location (IP address).

Search Terms:

The words (or phrase) a searcher enters into a search engine’s search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Shopping Search/Feeds:

Shopping search engines allow shoppers to look for products and prices in a search environment for rapid and easy comparison. Premium placement can be purchased on some shopping search indices via “XML feeds.”

Silicon Valley:

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, United States. The term originally referred to the region’s large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is not generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector. Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of cutting-edge entrepreneuers, engineers and venture capitalists.

Site Optimization:

The act of fine-tuning web site content and code to perform well in search engine results. See “Search Engine Optimization.”

Social Media:

A category of sites based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.

Social Media Marketing (SMM):

A form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon), social media sharing sites (Flickr, YouTube, Imgur), to blogs, forums, news aggregators and virtual 3D networks. Each social media site can be optimized to generate awareness or traffic.

Social Media Monitoring & Analysis:

The process of monitoring and analyzing data generated by social media and related marketing and optimization efforts.

Social Media Optimization (SMO):

A set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a “Digg This” button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing.

Spam:

Any search engine marketing method that a search engine deems to be detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results. Some search engines have written guidelines about what they consider to be spamming, but ultimately any activity a particular search engine deems harmful may be considered spam, whether or not there are published guidelines against it. Examples of spam include the creation of nonsensical doorway pages designed to please search engine algorithms rather than human visitors, or a heavy repetition of search terms on a page to increase keyword density. Also referred to as spamdexing.

Spider:

A search engine spider is an automated program, known as a robot or crawler that crawls and navigates through the web, visiting web pages to collect information (also known as indexing content) to add to or update a search engine’s index. The major engines on the web all have such a program, which is also known as a “crawler” or a “bot.”

Startups:

StartUps are created by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, software engineers, web developers, and others involved in the ground level of a new high tech web startups.

Subdomain:

A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. An example would be http://money.cnn.com is a subdomain of http://www.cnn.com. Subdomains are treated as separate sites from the larger domain it’s a part of and does not carry over the SEO value from it’s parent domain.

Subfolder:

A subfolder is a folder or path contained within a domain. An example would be http://www.google.com/adsense is a subfolder to http://www.google.com. Subfolders are treated as the same site as the parent domain and carry over all SEO value.

Submission:

The act to submitting a URL for inclusion into a search engine’s index. Unless done through paid inclusion, submission generally does not guarantee listing. In addition, submission does not help with rank improvement on crawler-based search engines unless search engine optimization efforts have been implemented. Submission can be done manually (i.e., you fill out an online form and submit) or automated, where a software program or online service may process the forms behind the scenes.

Title Tag:

An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results.

Unique Visitor:

A visitor that interacts with a site. They may interact more than once, but within analytics reporting, they are only counted one time.

Universal Search:

Also known as a blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and local information, product information, or news stories.

Venture Capital:

Also known as VC or Venture is a type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. There are typically six stages of financing offered in Venture Capital, that roughly correspond to these stages of a company’s development.

Vertical Content:

A vertical content network, as distinct from a general web content, focuses on a specific segment of online content. The vertical content area may be based on topicality, media type, or genre of content. Common examples include legal, medical, patent (intellectual property), travel, and automobile search engines. Vertical content networks typically focus on specific content that attempts to index only publisher pages that are relevant to a pre-defined topic or set of topics.

Viral Marketing:

Any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect.

Visitor Session:

Interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site.

Web 2.0:

A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and mobile applications.

White Papers:

Technical documents used primarily to generate leads for business-to-business technology companies. The technical papers typically include industry research, statistics and deep technical information.

WHOIS:

WHOIS is a query protocol to determine who the owner of a website is. Many resources are available to search WHOIS records such as Network Solutions. Private registrations can be used to hide contact information for WHOIS records.

XML Feeds:

A form of paid inclusion where a search engine is “fed” information about pages via XML, rather than gathering that information through crawling actual pages. Marketers can pay to have their pages included in a spider based search index either annually per URL or on a CPC basis based on an XML document representing each page on the client site. New media types are being introduced into paid inclusion, including graphics, video, audio, and rich media. These feeds are commonly used for Shopping Feeds.