vocabulary list for clients
web terminology & definitions

Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free program that reads PDF files. Very useful for clients who want to have printable official forms on their website, because PDF is cross platform file format. Download it here.

Cross Platform

When something is cross platform, it is compatible between different types of computers. For my clients generally we mean Windows, Macintosh. Some examples of cross platform in the web context are HTML files, PDF files (if the computer in question has Acrobat Reader installed), and JavaScript program applications.

Dirty Trick

General name I give to any search engine promotion spamming technique which exploits a bug or flaw in the search engines classification methods. When the owner/operators of the search engines discover the exploit and remove the flaw, you get moved from position 1 to 10,001 in the search results. I never employ dirty tricks to promote a client's site.

Domain Name

This is the name of your website, as in Your-Name-Dot-Com. You have to pay an annual fee for the right to use a domain name (even if you never set up a server for it). Even though the media has made it seem like the internet is only 'dotcom' (name.com); 'dotnet' (name.net) and 'dotorg' (name.org) extensions are available as well. Recently a variety of other TLDs became available such as .info and .us. I always recommend that my clients register domain names that are not homophonous. General rule of thumb: if you can't say it over the telephone without spelling it, choose another domain name.

FFA

Industry abbreviation for "Free For All". These are web pages that collect links to other websites. Originally a "dirty trick" conceived to help websites get more hits, now most search engines specifically say that their spiders will ignore this type of page. The website promotion companies that advertise that they will submit you to  "10,000" search engines are including over 9,900+ FFA pages. As the name implies, "Free For All" pages are not organized and they rarely, if ever, bring any visitors and therefore are mostly useless, and may even penalize your ranking in certain search engines. 

Hit Counter

A program which counts how many times a web page is loaded. The stupidest of the hit counters will not recognize that a visitor is repeatedly reloading the same page over and over again, and will slavishly increase the counter every time . I employ more sophisticated counters with referral statistics which track a visitor's entrance from any page on your site and follow them their progress until they exit. Each unique visitor makes the counter increase by one. 

Home Page

A home page is the main page (index page) of a site. Generally speaking when you type a domain name into you web browser, and don't specify a particular web page, the home page will appear by default.

HTML

Abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language. Contrary to common belief, HTML is technically not a programming language, but just a way of describing documents that contain information to be shared between different computers. These documents are known as web pages. Originally conceived as a collaborative tool for scientific research, the "Web" has infiltrated most people's daily lives.

HTTP

Abbreviation for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This used to be required by the browser when making a request for a web page, a way of saying "Hey, I want to start looking at web pages now. The web has become so widespread, clever creators of programs like Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have the browser insert it for you automatically.

Key Words

Words seeded into the meta tags of web pages to help search engines classify the page. Also, when visitors use search engines, these are the words they type in hoping to find the information they are looking for (and find your site). We use referrer statistics to see which key words bring you the most hits and may modify your pages later on to bring more visitors according to the popularity of particular search terms.

Link

Link is short for hyperlink. Basically, in a traditionally designed web page, underlined and colored text will open a page or go to a section of text that further explains whatever the word is referring to. This glossary page is full of links to definitions of terms on the same page, and a link to the website's home page.

Meta Tags

Part of the HTML code of a web page that is invisible to the visitor that is solely created to help search engine spiders classify the page.

Pay-Per-Click

Websites that charge you every time someone clicks on an advertisement on their site and comes to yours. Overture.com (formerly known as GoTo.com) is the most famous of these. Contrast with pay-per-impression.

Be sure to keep a good eye on your ROI !

Pay-Per-Impression

Websites that charge you every time someone sees your advertisement on their site, even if they don't click on it. Generally much more expensive for the advertiser and more profitable for the site (in other words... we don't recommend them!). Contrast with Pay-Per-Click.

PDF

An abbreviation for Portable Document Format, it is a cross platform file format that enables the same file to be viewed and printed with the exact same results, no matter what type of computer the visitor is using. PDF however, does require that Acrobat Reader be installed on the machine. Most US government documents, including IRS tax return forms are available online as PDF files.

Referrers

Website tracking statistics, better than just raw numbers, a referrer will show you which site referred the visitor to your site, what operating system they were using, often what country they came from, and what key word from what search engine brought them to you.

ROI

Business speak for "return on investment". For this reason, all of our sites to have referrers tracking.

Robots

Automated, autonomous programs on the internet. See Spiders.

SE

My personal abbreviation for search engines. I use it all the time in correspondence, so I thought I would include it.

Search Engines

Websites databases which classify website content according to key words and actual content. Search engines use automated programs called "spiders" to analyze web pages and classify the content according to what the page designers have indicated and/or what the site contains. Contrast with Web Directories.

Server

A special high speed computer with an "always on" connection to the internet which houses your website. When someone types in your domain name, the server sends the web page to their computer's web browser.

Site Map

A special web page which has links to every page of a website. A handy navigation tool for impatient visitors, and a good way to help search engines index your site better.

Spam

unwanted, unsolicited junk email. Also applies to dirty trick search engine submission techniques wherein web designers falsify their search engine classification meta tags so that they will appear for non-related/incorrect terms: for instance Porn site might use this technique to show up when someone types in an innocuous search term such as "cigar" or "whitehouse"...

Spider

Also known as robots. Automated programs used to collect data from websites. Search engines send spiders out to classify the content of web pages. Spammers often use spiders to harvest email addresses from web pages and send you junk mail.

TLD

Abbreviation for Top Level Domain Name. Examples of TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov. Foreign countries have their own set of TLDs, Mexico's for instance are: .mx, .com.mx, .net.mx, .org.mx, .edu.mx, and .gob.mx. The United Kingdom's TLDs are .co.uk, .net.uk, .ac.uk, .org.uk, .gov.uk.

Visitor

Someone who is looking at a web pages on your server. You might also hear them called "surfers" or "web surfers".

Web Browser

A program that is used to view web pages. Examples of the most common web browsers are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Though they ideally should treat all web pages equally, they rarely do. Often, depending on the "flavor" (Navigator or Explorer) , the "species" (Mac or Windows), and the "vintage" (the version number) you can end up with very, very different results. One of the hardest jobs I have is making my client's web pages work in different flavors, species and vintages.

Web Directories

Websites which which use human editors (as opposed to automated spiders) to classify and categorize websites. They usually produce fewer results when searched than search engines, but usually have much more accurate and up-to-date information (and are less often victimized by spammers). Contrast with Search Engines.

Web Page

a single HTML file on a server, usually containing information viewable in visitor's web browser.

Website

For the purposes of my clients, we can say a website is all the interlinked web pages stored on a server using the same domain name.

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