Glossary of Website and Internet Terms

Below is a list of website and blogging terms explained in plain English for non-technical people.

If you know of a term or topic we have missed please Contact Us so we can keep this list growing and relevant.

Ad rotation –on websites ads are often rotated through a list so that when a user clicks on pages or returns to a prior page they see different ads.

Ad space – a designated area on a web page reserved for ads.

Affiliate marketing – this involves websites selling or promoting something from another website and receiving some sort of commission or percentage in return.

Algorithm – this is the set of rules a Search Engine uses to rank websites for a particular search query (eg “hotels in London”).  Each Search Engine has a slightly different set of rules and therefore often present search results slightly differently.

ALT Tags – these are used to give the brief explanation you see when you move your mouse over an image on a website. 

Backlink – this is a link coming from another website back to your own, also called inward or inbound links.  Some Search Engines use backlinks as an indicator of the popularity of a site.

Banned – this is when a Search Engine removes a site from its index because it has broken its guidelines.

Banner – this is normally the graphical space at the top of a website.  It usually contains the company logo and sometimes has an ad in it, commonly called banner advertising.  Banner Ads may also be down the sides of a webpage or at the bottom.

Cache – this is where your computer stores a memory of a website or webpage.

Click Stream – this is the sequence of pages a user clicks through a website or series of websites.  It is also called a path.

Click through – this is a term used for online advertising where a user actually clicks a link and brings up a specific web page.  A common term for this type of online advertising, such as Google Adwords, is Pay Per Click because the advertiser pays for each time a visitor clicks and views their website.

Click Rate – this is the percentage number of times that a user sees an ad or link on a web page and actually clicks it to view the webpage being promoted. Click rates for generic-type ads are usually well under 1% whereas a more innovative campaign may get results as high as 5%.

Client – this is internet terminology for when your computer accesses information from the internet (or any network) and it becomes the client of the server that is hosting the information.

Cloaking – this involves hiding content on a page, by presenting one page to the Search Engines, but a different page to other users.  It has some legitimate uses but is disliked by some Search Engines as the general culture of the internet is open and honest.

Cookie – this is a file on a user’s hard-drive which is used to store data about that user. Cookies are commonly used on sites that require a login and provide personalised information to users. 

Cost Per Click (CPC) – this is the price charged to an advertiser everytime a visitor clicks on their advertisement or link.  Advertisers often set a daily budget and if this budget is reached then their ad is removed for the rest of the day.

Crawlers – these are Search Engine programs that travel the internet and index web pages by noting keywords and content.  They are also called spiders or robots.

Description – this is the descriptive text you see when a website is shown in Search Engine results.  This is one part of your website that Search Engine Marketing professionals may work on to help your rankings.

Directory – this is an index of web pages, sometimes compiled by human editors and sometime automated.

Domain – this is the end part of a web address such as .com, .co.uk, .kh etc.  A URL is the full length description with the http:// at the start.

Domain name – this is a website address such as www.yourcompany.com.

Doorway page – this is a technique used to present a website to the Search Engines the way they want it, while showing a more user-friendly page to website visitors.

Dynamic pages – these are web pages that change because they are based on a database (such as property pages on real estate websites), instead of static pages that sit unchanged unless their website owner edits them.  You can often tell a dynamic website because its URLs end in .asp, .cfm, or .cgi.

Document – a term used in web statistics for information that someone viewing a website wants to see, such as an image, web page or text file.

eCommerce – the general term for Electronic Commerce which means selling over the internet.  The most common examples are transactional websites that such as Amazon.com.

Fold – this word has come from advertising where ‘above the fold’ means the part of a website that is immediately visible without scrolling down.  This area is smaller on older monitors with screen settings like 800x600, whereas modern monitors show a larger view of the page.

Hit – this is a term used for webstats but it can be misleading.  A Hit means the request of an individual file from your webpage, but by viewing one webpage a single user may actually be registered as a number of hits because in viewing the page they will have requested a number of files: images, html, music and others that all make up the overall web page being viewed.  ‘Unique Visitors’ is a more accurate (but not perfect) measure of the number of people viewing your website.

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language often called ‘code’ is the standard language that web pages are written in.

Impression – this term relates to advertising where an impression is counted every time a viewers sees a page with your ad on, regardless of whether they click through to your website or not.  Web advertising is often sold on Cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

Index – the part of a Search Engine that is used for storing all the information about websites.

Indexing – the process whereby a Search Engine adds web pages to its database.

IP Address – this stands for internet protocol address and every device connected to the internet has one which acts as a unique locator.

ISP – this means internet service provider and represents any company that offers access to the internet.

Java – a common computer programming language used on many websites.

Keyword Search – this is when someone uses a Search Engine to find appropriate websites by typing certain words or phrases (eg “wedding photographers”).  The Search Engine will present websites in order of relevancy containing the words or phrases.

Keywords tag – this is part of a website where you can add special words you want to emphasize for the Search Engines, but not all of them pick up this information.

Link Popularity – this is the number of other websites that link to your site.  Some Search Engines such as Google use this as a measure to help them rank your own site.

Meta Search Engine – this is a service such as ASK or Dogpile that lets you enter a search, and then gets the results from a number of different Search Engines and summarises them all for you.

Meta Tags – this is information that is not visible to users on a website, but is loaded into areas of a web page to be found by Search Engines and help them rank the site in results.

Order – this is an eCommerce term for when a user has completed a transaction and purchased something online. 

Pay Per Click (PPC) – is the common term for advertising such as Google Adwords where an advertiser pays each time someone clicks from their ad through to their website.  The advertiser agrees to a fixed amount for each click-through from their ad, and when their daily budget is reached then their ad may be removed so that no more people can see it and click on it.

Query – this is basically the word or words a searcher enters into a Search Engine.  The Search Engine will then present the results in order of relevancy that match the query.

Referrer – this is a term used for website statistics that describes the URL that a visitor to your site came from before they got to you.

Registration – the process of making a request to a Search Engine to record your website in its index.

Relevancy Algorithm – this is the formula that individual Search Engines apply when a searcher types in certain words and the Search Engine tries to present web pages in the order of most relevance.

Robot - these are Search Engine programs that travel the internet and index web pages by noting keywords and content.  They are also called spiders or crawlers.

Search Engine – in simplest terms this is a searchable online database of web pages and other online information.  The most common ones are Google, MSN and AOL, but there are many more.  A Search Engine consists of one or more servers that store information and present it as results, spidering software that constantly searches for new web pages to add to the index database, and algorithms that decide the order of web pages shown in results as being most relevant to a specific search.  

Search String – this is a term used for the words entered by a user into a Search Engine as a search query.

Server – this is a computer that holds information about a website or directory.  All web pages are stored on a server and Search Engines such as Google have many powerful servers.

Spiders – this is a Search Engine program that travels the internet and indexes web pages by noting keywords and content.  They are also called robots or crawlers.

Splash Page – this is a page that precedes a homepage and is seen by a visitor before they can get to the homepage.  Splash pages are less common now as many see them as an annoyance because they delay a visitor from getting to the actual website.

Sponsor – this commonly means the person paying for an online ad.  Sponsored links are the parts on a website that contain advertising.

Traffic – this generally means visitors to your site.  The term is often used in search engine marketing and advertising when people talk about ‘driving traffic to your site’.  For traffic to your site to be really valuable it needs to be targeted so that people who are genuinely interested in what you offer are finding your site.

Unique Visitor – this is a person with a unique address who has visited a website and the site webstats have recorded them.  Webstats usually measure unique visitors by the day (although the timeframe can be set for shorter or longer) so that if you visit a website twice in a day you will be recorded as one unique visitor, but if you visit on a Monday and again on a Wednesday, then the webstats for that month will record you as two unique visitors.

URL – this stands for Universal Resource Locator (although not many people would call it that).  It is simply an address that defines a unique resource such as a web page or email.  A URL includes the full description such as http:// whereas a domain is just the name and the ending, eg yoursite.com.

User Session – this is recorded when someone with a unique address visits or re-visits a website.  There is sometimes a set timeframe such as half an hour, and if a visitor re-enters after that timeframe another user session will be recorded.  User sessions can be a measure for overall website activity but should not be used to measure individual users because the same user might have been recorded many times.

View – this can be the part of a website that a visitor sees on their screen without having to scroll down the page, and it is also used in online advertising to describe each time a visitor sees a specific ad in front of them.

Visit -  this is another webstats term referring to a unique visitor visiting a website for the first time in a set timeframe (usually a day).  This term is used a lot when talking about website traffic and usage and it needs to be clearly defined by the webstats you are using if it is to be useful.