Search Engine Terms

Algorithms - The method that search engines and directories use to determine the relevancy of a given web page for a particular search query. These algorithms vary for each engine, are constantly in flux and are not made public.

HTML code - Hyper Text Markup Language is the hidden code on each page of your site. This code provides the Internet browser with instructions on how to format and present the page's content and graphics. For search engine positioning to be successful it is very important to have clean html code. There are a number of WYSIWYG html editors on the market that can be detrimental to your rankings. These editors usually produce very bloated code that tends to dilute the frequency and prominence of your keywords.

WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - html editor

Keywords/phrases - important terms and phrases that search engines and directories will use to classify you and searchers will use to locate you. A keyword query may be entered by the user in a variety of formats: lowercase, uppercase, proper case, and in quotes for an exact match. It is important that each page of your web site contain the most important keyword and phrases in a variety of formats in strategic locations.

Link popularity - Link popularity refers to the number of outside links pointing to your site. The majority of major search engines now figure link popularity into the ranking algorithms so it is prudent to seek outside links to your site. You can check your site's link popularity on three engines at: www.linkpopularity.com

Optimisation - Web pages created to improve the positioning of a site with one or more search engines. Optimisation involves designing new pages, new text for the title-tags, meta-tags, alt- attributes and headings.

Search Directory - A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet web pages and returning lists of pages that match particular queries. Directories (also known as Indexes) are normally compiled manually, by user submission, and often involve an editorial selection and/or categorisation process (such as at LookSmart and Yahoo!).

Search Engine - The software that searches an index of spidered web pages and returns matches. Also used to describe web sites that allow users to search the Internet for keywords. See our list of top search engines.

Spamdexing/Spamming - The alteration or creation of a document with intent to deceive an electronic catalogue or filing system. Any technique that increases the potential position of a site at the expense of the quality of the search engine's database can also be regarded as spamdexing - also known as spamming or spoofing. When discovered, these techniques will cause the search engine to ban the offending domain.

Spider - Not something you jump up & down on if you see it crawling across your bathroom floor! The software that scans documents and adds them to an index by following links. Spider is often used as a synonym for search engine.