Useful Information and Glossary
Please also see our SEO glossary
BLOG
A blog is a website, a weblog. Blog sites are usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
CACHE
In browsers "cache" is used to identify a apace where web pages you have visited are stored in your computer. A copy of documents you retrieve is stored in cache. When you use GO, BACK, or any other means to revisit a document, the browser first checks to see if it is in cache and will retrieve it from there because it is much faster than retrieving it from the server.
CGI
"Common Gateway Interface". The most common way Web programs interact dynamically with users. Many search boxes and other applications that result in a page with content tailored to the user's search terms rely on CGI to process the data once it's submitted, to pass it to a background program in JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, or another programming language, and then to integrate the response into a display using HTML.
INTERNET COOKIES
A message from a WEB SERVER computer, sent to and stored by your browser on your computer. When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents. The main use for cookies is to provide customized Web pages according to a profile of your interests. When you log onto a "customize" type of invitation on a Web page and fill in your name and other information, this may result in a cookie on your computer which that Web page will access to appear to "know" you and provide what you want. If you fill out these forms, you may also receive e-mail and other solicitation independent of cookies.
DOMAIN, TOP LEVEL DOMAIN (TLD)
Hierarchical scheme for indicating logical and sometimes geographical venue of a web-page from the network. In the US, common domains are .edu (education), .gov (government agency), .net (network related), .com (commercial), .org (non profit and research organizations). Outside the US, domains indicate country: ca (Canada), uk (United Kingdom), au (Australia), jp (Japan), fr (France), etc. Neither of these lists is exhaustive. See also DNS entry.
DOMAIN NAME, DOMAIN NAME SERVER (DNS) ENTRY
Any of these terms refers to the initial part of a URL, down to the first /, where the domain and name of the host or SERVER computer are listed (most often in reversed order, name first, then domain). The domain name gives you who "published" a page, made it public by putting it on the Web. A domain name is translated in huge tables standardized across the Internet into a numeric IP address unique the host computer sought. These tables are maintained on computers called "Domain Name Servers". Whenever you ask the browser to find a URL, the browser must consult the table on the domain name server that particular computer is networked to consult. Domain Name Server entry frequently appears a browser error message when you try to enter a URL. If this lookup fails for any reason, the "lacks DNS entry" error occurs. The most common remedy is simply to try the URL again, when the domain name server is less busy, and it will find the entry (the corresponding numeric IP address).
IP ADDRESS
(Internet Protocol number or address). A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 165.113.245.2 Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP address. If a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. Ability to transfer rapidly entire files from one computer to another, intact for viewing or other purposes.
HTML
Hypertext Mark-up Language. A standardized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents (and possibly other applications such as sound or motion), and formatting instructions for display on the screen. When you view a Web page, you are looking at the product of this code working behind the scenes in conjunction with your browser. Browsers are programmed to interpret HTML for display. HTML often imbeds within it other programming languages and applications such as SGML, XML, JavaScript, CGI-script and more. It is possible to deliver or access and execute virtually any program via the WWW. You can see HTML in Netscape by selecting the View pop-down menu tab, then "Document Source". If you download a document as "Source", the file will contain HTML mark-up codes and can be viewed in Netscape and other browsers.
HYPERTEXT
On the World Wide Web, the feature, built into HTML, that allows a text area, image, or other object to become a "link" (as if in a chain) that retrieves another computer file (another Web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the Internet. The range of possibilities is limited by the ability of the computer retrieving the outside file to view, play, or otherwise open the incoming file. It needs to have software that can interact with the imported file. Many software capabilities of this type are built into browsers or can be added as "plug-ins".
JAVA
A network-oriented programming language invented by Sun Microsystems that is specifically designed for writing programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to our computer or files. Using small Java programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as animations, calculators, and other fancy tricks. We can expect to see a huge variety of features added to the Web using Java, since you can write a Java program to do almost anything a regular computer program can do, and then include that Java program in a Web page.
JAVASCRIPT
A simple programming language developed by Netscape to enable greater interactivity in Web pages. It shares some characteristics with JAVA but is independent. It interacts with HTML, enabling dynamic content and motion.
LINK
The URL imbedded in another document, so that if you click on the highlighted text or button referring to the link, you retrieve the outside URL.
If you search the field "link", you retrieve on text in these imbedded URLs which you do not see in the documents. PDF or .pdf or pdf file Abbreviation for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems, that is used to capture almost any kind of document with the formatting in the original. Viewing a PDF file requires Acrobat Reader, which is built into most browsers and can be downloaded free from Adobe.
PR - Page Rank
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents on the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. This is to do with inward links from other sites and outward links to other sites. The more the links the better the PR. However, there are exceptions and one of the most important ones are that the links are content relevant to both sit5es and another very important factor is the quality of the content. Not to be confused with SERPs (discussed below). You could have a PR of 0, but your pages could have good SERPs. So to get good PR you must start link building. Link Building Guide Obviously getting a site with a PR of 5 for example to link to you would be a real bonus, but most of the time people probably will not wish to link with you if your PR is less than 3. But don't get put off. Google likes on-way links to. So find good content rich and relevant sites to link to and some may link back, if you ask nicely. Also add your site to external sources, directories, link exchange, forum links in your signature, article directories, testamonials, blog comments, social book marking sites, social media networking sites.
PLUG-IN
An application built into a browser or added to a browser to enable it to interact with a special file type (such as a movie, sound file, Word document, etc.)
SERP or SERPS
Sarch Engine Results Page. The Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search defined by a keyword. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine’s directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.
SERVER, WEB SERVER, HOST
A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Also called HOST computer. Web servers are the closest equivalent to what in the print world is called the "publisher" of a print document. An important difference is that most print publishers carefully edit the content and quality of their publications in an effort to market them and future publications. This convention is not required in the Web world, where anyone can be a publisher; careful evaluation of Web pages is therefore mandatory. Also called a "Host".
SPIDERS
Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as crawlers or knowledge-bots or knowbots that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep the search engine database of web pages up to date. They obtain new pages, update known pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into the "home" database. Most large search engines operate several robots all the time. Even so, the Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders to cover it, resulting in a certain degree of "out-of-datedness" (link rot) in all the search engines.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator
The unique address of any Web document. May be keyed in Netscape's OPEN or Netscape's LOCATION / GO TO box to retrieve a document. There is a logic the layout of a URL: anatomy of a URL: Type of file (could say ftp:// or telnet://) Domain name (computer file is on and its location on the Internet) path or directory on the computer to this file Name of file, and its file extension (usually ending in .html or .htm) http:// www.lib.berkeley.edu/ TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/ FindInfo.html
XHTML
URL A variant of HTML. Stands for Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language is a hybrid between HTML and XML that is more universally acceptable in Web pages and search engines than XML
XML
Extensible Mark-up Language, a dilution for Web page use of SGML (Standard General Mark-up Language), which is not readily viewable in ordinary browsers and is difficult to apply to Web pages. XML is very useful (among other things) for pages emerging from databases and other applications where parts of the page are standardized and must reappear many times.