Glossary of Digital Terms

Ad Delivery:
A setting that determines how quickly you want Google to use your budget each day: either spread throughout the day (standard) or more quickly (accelerated). This setting affects when during the day your ads are likely to show, especially if your campaigns are limited by budget.

Ad Extensions:
Additional incentives that increase the likelihood that users will click your ads. Advertisers can include business addresses, phone numbers, additional site links, promotions, or specific product information.

Ad Format:
The size in pixels of the ad unit that was served.

Ad Group:
The most granular line item in delivery settings, represents the audience and product selections. A set of keywords, ads, and bids that is a key part of how your account is organized. Each campaign is made up of one or more ad groups, while each ad group typically includes about 5-10 keywords.

Ad Position:
The order in which your ad appears on a page in relation to other paid ads. An ad position of “1” means that your ad is the first ad on a page.

Ad Rank:
Not to be confused with Ad Position, Ad Rank is a value that’s used to determine your ad position behind-the-scenes. This is calculated as the product of your bid and Quality Score.

Ad Rotation:
A preference that determines which ad in your ad group should show when you have multiple ads active. Rotation settings include Optimize and Rotate Indefinitely. Optimizeuses Google’s machine learning to automatically choose the ad most likely to win the auction. Rotate Indefinitely will rotate your ads evenly across all auctions. This setting is important to check to ensure that you have a proper balance between testing of your messaging and performance of your account.

Ad Scheduling:
Setting that allows you to control and specify which hours and days you want your ads to appear, targeting periods of time when you expect your ads to be more successful. It can also be used to automatically adjust bids during specific time periods (which is also known as dayparting).

Ad Server:
The computer or group of computers responsible for the actual serving of creatives to websites, or for making decisions about which ads will serve.

Ad Space:
The space on a web page reserved to display advertising.

Ad Status:
A status for each ad that describes whether that ad is able to run, and if so, whether there are any policy restrictions on how or when it can run. Common ad statusesinclude Under Review, Eligible, Approved and more.

AdSense:
A Google-based product that compensates website owners for showing relevant Display Network ads on their site.

Advertising Policies:
Strongly suggested guidelines for your ads, keywords, and website. Ads that violate policies won’t be able to run.

AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE):
Allows users to test changes to their account on a portion of the auctions that your ads participate in. ACEs can be set up to test new keywords, bids, placements and more. Users can also choose how much of the traffic they want to test and even discard the experiment at any point. If the experiment is discarded, your changes will automatically revert to the way they were before the test.

AdWords Editor:
A free software application by Google that allows you to make changes to your account in bulk. This allows users to add new campaigns/ad groups/keywords, make bid changes and more.

AdWords Labels:
These allow advertisers to organize elements within their accounts into meaningful groups for faster and easier reporting. Labels can be applied to keywords, campaigns, ad groups, and ads.

Amazon Marketing Services (AMS):
Amazon’s PPC advertising option for Amazon Vendors. AMS is for advertising on Amazon’s website and offers a number of advertising option including sponsored product display ads and headline display ads.

Analytics Content Experiments:
Formerly known as Website Optimizer (standalone), this tool is built into the Analytics platform and allows users to setup A/B or multivariate tests for their landing pages to see how those changes affect user behavior. This tool can be a great way to make incremental improvements to conversion rates.

Application Program Interface (API):
An application that interacts directly with one or more external servers.

Attribution:
The process of connecting an ad event to a consumer action.

Audiences:
In PPC, audiences are used to define the customers you target with your PPC ads. An audience can also refer to a group of users that have visited one or more pages of a website or completed a specific action. After this happens, they are included on lists that can be used to enhance your Display Network and Remarketing efforts. Advertisers can also create custom combinations, which can be a good way to target more specific audiences. Audiences used to define the customers you target with your PPC ads.

Automated Rules:
A feature that automatically adjusts your ad statuses, budgets, and bids, so you don’t have to spend so much time manually monitoring your campaigns. The cool part about automated rules is that you can customize and fine-tune them to your individual account goals/KPIs.

Automated Extensions:
Automated ad extensions created by Google to help improve your ad’s performance. Automated extensions include dynamic sitelinks, locations, seller ratings and more.

Automatic Bidding:
Automatic bidding allows you to put your bidding on autopilot with the goal of getting the most possible clicks within your budget. You can also set a CPC bid limit if you don’t want to exceed a particular price for each click.

Automatic Placements:
Locations or domains on the Display Network where your ads can show, which are automatically matched to your keywords and/or other targeting methods.

Auto Tagging:
A feature in AdWords that automatically appends a custom code to your destination URLs to help you track your ad performance using website tracking programs like Google Analytics.

Average Cost-Per-Click (Avg. CPC):
The average amount that you’ve been charged for a click on your ad. Average CPC is calculated by dividing the total cost of your clicks by the total number of clicks.

Average Position:
The number representing the average position of a Google Search ad within the returned results. A statistic that describes how your ad is typically positioned on search results pages.

AdWords:
Google Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program, very common way of basic website advertisement.

AdWords Site:
(MFA) Made for Google AdSense Ads – websites that are designed from the ground up as a venue for GA advertisements. This is usually, but not always a bad thing. TV programming is usually Made for Advertisement.

Affiliate:
An affiliate site markets products or services that are actually sold by another website or business in exchange for fees or commissions. Amazon!

Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based program where a business rewards their affiliates (i.e., the one doing the recruiting) for each new customer they bring to the business. When a potential customer visits the affiliate’s website that’s advertising the business, a cookie is deposited on their computer. When they follow the affiliate’s link to the business’ website and perform an action (e.g., fill out a form, buy something, etc.), the business checks their computer for affiliate cookies.

Algorithm:
(Algo) A program used by search engines to determine what pages to suggest for a given search query.

Alt Text:
A description of a graphic, which usually isn’t displayed to the end user, unless the graphic is undeliverable, or a browser is used that doesn’t display graphics. Alt text is important because search engines can’t tell one picture from another. Alt text is the one place where it is acceptable for the spider to get different content than the human user, but only because the alt text is accessible to the user, and when properly used is an accurate description of the associated picture. Special web browsers for visually challenged people rely on the alt text to make the content of graphics accessible to the users.

Analytics:
A program which assists in gathering and analyzing data about website usage. Google analytics is a feature rich, popular, free analytics program.

Anchor Text:
The user visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.

Astroturfing:
(The opposite of full disclosure) attempting to advance a commercial or political agenda while pretending to be an impartial grassroots participant in a social group. Participating in a user forum with the secret purpose of branding, customer recruitment, or public relations.

Authority:
(Trust, link juice, Google juice) The amount of trust that a site is credited with for a particular search query. Authority/trust is derived from related incoming links from other trusted sites.

Authority Site:
A website which has many incoming links from other related expert/hub sites. Because of this simultaneous citation from trusted hubs an authority site usually has high trust, page rank, and search results placement. Wikipedia is an example of an authority site.

Bandwidth:
In computing, bandwidth is the bit-rate of available or consumed information capacity expressed typically in metric multiples of bits per second. Variously, bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth.

Behavioral:
Serving ads to users who display certain behaviors online. i.e. People who drive a BMW, People looking for auto loans/dealers, Consumer spending behaviors etc.

BHV:
Behavioral target, determined by user browsing habits.

Bid:
The maximum amount you are willing to pay for a search keyword click.

Bidding Types:
There are several ways to bid on your keywords, depending on what matters most to you and your business. There are three main bidding types available: focus on clicks (CPC), impressions (CPM), or conversions (CPA).

Bing Ads:
Formerly known as adCenter, Bing Ads is a service that provides pay-per-click advertising on Bing and Yahoo! search properties.

Bing Ads Editor:
A free desktop tool designed to help you manage your account offline and easily make changes in bulk.

Bing Campaign Analytics:
The Campaign Analytics tool helps you track whether or not your ads are achieving your desired goals. You might also think of this as Bing’s version of Google Analytics.

Bidding Software:
As the title indicates, this type of software is primarily used for the automatic controlling of bids. However, bidding software is also helpful for consolidating multiple advertising channels in one place, as well as providing the ability create high-level rules and algorithms to help optimize large PPC accounts.

Bounce Rate:
Percent of people who enter your site but leave without visiting any other page. A Google Analytics measurement to determine the percentage of visits in which the visitor leaves before engaging on a website.

Broad Match:
The default matching option, broad match means that your ad may show if a search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads can also show for singular or plural forms, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. Sticking with the broad match default is a great choice if you don’t want to spend a lot of time building your keyword lists and want to capture the highest possible volume of ad traffic.

Broad Match Modifier (BMM):
You can add a modifier, a plus sign (+), to your broad match keywords if you’d like your ads to show when someone searches for close variants of your keywords in any order. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms. Unlike broad match, using a modifier excludes synonyms or related searches. For this reason, it adds an additional level of control. Using broad match modifier is a good choice if you want to increase relevancy even if it means you might get less ad traffic than broad match.

B2B:
Business to Business.

B2C:
Business to Consumer

Back Link:
(Inlink, incoming link) Any link into a page or site from any other page or site.

Black Hat:
Search engine optimization tactics that are counter to best practices such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Blog:
A website which presents content in a more or less chronological series. Content may or may not be time sensitive. Most blogs us a Content Management System such as WordPress rather than individually crafted Webpages. Because of this, the Blogger can choose to concentrate on content creation instead of arcane code.

Bot:
(Robot, spider, crawler) A program which performs a task more or less autonomously. Search engines use bots to find and add web pages to their search indexes. Spammers often use bots to “scrape” content for the purpose of plagiarizing it for exploitation by the Spammer.

Bounce Rate:
The percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages.

Bread Crumbs:
Web site navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.

Cpanel:
Cpanel is a web hosting control panel that provides access to automation tools designed to give the ability to quickly and easily manage servers and websites.

Current Customer Activation:
Targeting current customers using their IP addresses to serve them ads about current specials or offers and keep them coming back.

Click-Through Rate (CTR):
A way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. The Ratio of users who click on your ad to the number of total users who were served the ad. To find this number, the number of clicks that an ad receives is divided by the number of times the ad was shown (impressions). Note: Most Programmatic campaigns have a guaranteed .10% eCTR NOT CTR. So, for example, if a campaign receives 120,000 impressions and 110 clicks but only 100,000 impressions were purchased, the CTR will show as .09% but the eCTR will be .11%, which exceeds the guarantee.

Conversions:
A measure of user interaction with a client’s site. For Programmatic campaigns, these are users that were driven to your client’s website by the programmatic campaign and stayed for over 60 seconds. These include Post Impression (or Post View) Conversions and Post Click Conversions.

CTURL:
Shorthand for Click-Through URL. The URL where the user lands after clicking on an ad.

Call to Action (CTA):
The messaging on the creative that asks for the user’s engagement (e.g. click here, learn more, buy now, etc.).

Category:
The content classification passed to the ad server from the site the ad was served to (e.g. Auto, Sports, etc.).

CCA:
Short for “Current Customer Activation” and indicates an IP targeted campaign.

Cookies:
Small files that are sent from a web server to the local user’s computer to store information unique to that user.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC):
Short for “Cost Per Click.” The dollar amount paid per each click of an ad. The amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

CPM:
Short for “Cost Per Mille (thousand impressions)” and is a standard measurement of cost increments in digital advertising [CPM=(total cost*1000)/impressions].

Call Extensions:
Feature that enables users to display a Google forwarding or business phone number along with their PPC ad.

Callout Extensions:
A PPC text ad extension that allows you to promote unique offers, like free shipping or price matching.

Campaign:
A set of ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings. Your AdWords account can have one or many ad campaignsrunning.

Change History:
A tool that lists the changes you’ve made to your account during the past two years. See details about changes like bid adjustments, status changes, keyword additions and more. This is particularly helpful because you can filter changes based on a specific date or date range.

Clicks:
In PPC, a click is registered when someone clicks on one of your Search or Display Network ads.

Click-to-Call:
Another name for Call Extensions, where you can add a business phone number to your ad. The “click-to-call” comes from users having the ability to simply click on the phone number in your ad to place the call.

Client ID:
Known as an XID in Bing Ads, a Client ID is a 10-digit string of numbers that help distinguish one account from another in the Google system.

Contextual Targeting:
Targeting feature that matches your ads to other relevant sites on the Display Network using your keywords and/or topics.

Conversion:
A desired action taken by a website visitor, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. Search engines track visitors for up to 30 days, so your conversion may not happen until a subsequent visit several days later.

Conversion Optimizer:
Also known as CPA bidding, this is a feature that uses historical conversion data to predict which clicks are likely to be valuable, then changes your bids to help you maximize conversions.

Conversion Rate:
Conversions divided by clicks, which represent the rate at which a click on your ad resulted in a conversion or desired action.

Cookies:
Not to be confused with snack-food, this is a small file saved on people’s computers to help store preferences and other information regarding previous search history.  Engines use these to track conversions and build audiences for remarketing lists.

Cost-Per-Lead (CPL):
Also referred to as Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), this refers to the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other internet publishers for a lead generated on its advertisement.

Cost-Per-Phone Call (CPP):
Maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a phone call. This feature will only work when using call extensions and a Google forwarding number with your ad.

Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM):
Pricing means advertisers pay their maximum bid amount for every one thousand impressions received.  This option is only available on the display network.

Cost-Per-View (CPV):
Used with TrueView video campaigns, this is a bidding option that allows users to pay each time your video is played.

Canonical URL:
The canonical URL is the best address on which a user can find a piece of information. Sometimes you might have a situation where the same page content can be accessed at more than one address. Specifying the canonical URL helps search engines understand which address for a piece of content is the best one.

Canonical Issues:
(Duplicate content) canon = legitimate or official version – It is often nearly impossible to avoid duplicate content, especially with CMSs like WordPress, but also due to the fact that www.site.com, site.com, and www.site.com/index.htm are supposedly seen as dupes by the SEs – although it’s a bit hard to believe they aren’t more sophisticated than that. However, these issues can be dealt with effectively in several ways including – using the noindex meta tag in the non-canonical copies, and 301 server redirects to the canon.

Click Fraud:
Improper clicks on a PPC advertisement usually by the publisher or his minions for the purpose of undeserved profit. Click fraud is a huge issue for ad agencies like Google, because it lowers advertiser confidence that they will get fair value for their add spend.

Cloak:
The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.

CMS Content Management System:
Programs such as WordPress, which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills if they so choose.

Code Swapping:
(Bait and switch) Changing the content after high rankings are achieved.

Comment Spam:
Posting blog comments for the purpose of generating an inlink to another site. The reason many blogs use link condoms.

Content:
(Text, copy) The part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding and boilerplate are not usually considered to be content.

Contextual:
Advertisement Advertising which is related to the content.

Conversion:
(Goal) Achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, and sales are examples of conversions.

Conversion Form:
A form through which you collect information about your site visitor. Conversion forms convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.

Conversion Rate:
Percentage of users who convert – see conversion.

CPC Cost Per Click:
The rate that is paid per click for a Pay Per Click Advertiser

CPM:
(Cost Per Thousand impressions) A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M – from the Roman numeral for one thousand.

Crawler:
(Bot, spider) A program which moves through the worldwide web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data.

CSS:
(Cascading Style Sheets) The part of your code that defines how different elements of your site look (examples: headers, links).

DNS:
The Domain Name System translates internet domain and host names to IP addresses. DNS automatically converts the names we type in our Web browser address bar to the IP addresses of Web servers hosting those sites.

Demographic:
Serving ads to users that fall into a particular sector of the population. i.e. Age (20-35 year olds, etc.), Education (High School Graduates/College Graduates, etc.), Income (100k+, Below 50k, etc.), etc.

Day Parting:
Serving ads only during the hours of the day when users are most likely to interact with them. i.e. Only serving ads during business hours, lunch time, etc.

Data Element:
A selection of cookied user data pools relative to audience selections for behavioral targeting.

Direct Traffic:
A Google Analytics term describing visits to your site where the user types your URL directly into their browser’s address bar to get to your site; direct traffic illustrates how many of your visitors know your brand and website URL.

Display Ad:
A kind of digital advertisement that displays a graphic, normally with the ability to interact, within a designated ad space, sometimes also called banner ads

DMA:
Short for “Designated Marketing Area” and describes a metropolitan area as it relates to geographic targeting.

Domain Name:
The unique name that identifies a website.

DSP:
Short for “Demand Side Platform” which is a system that allows buyers of digital advertising inventory to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface. We own our own DSP.

Daily Budget:
An amount set for each ad campaign to specify how much, on average, you’d like to spend each day. It is important to know that on any single day you can spend up to twice your daily budget, however, your daily budget will average out by end-of-month.

Data Filters:
A feature that allows users to select, sort and view only the information that is most important to them. This oftentimes makes large quantities of data become easier to digest.

Day Parting:
Optimization technique where you adjust your ads to run during the most profitable hours and/or days. For example, if you run a call center that operates from 8-5, you can schedule ads to run during that timespan only.

Default Max. CPC:
Set at the ad group level, this represents the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each ad click. If you don’t set a specific keyword bid, AdWords will apply your default max. CPC bid.

Destination URL:
The URL address for the page you’re sending traffic from your PPC ads.  This is allowed to be different from the display URL, although it has to direct users to the same domain as what is in the display URL.

Devices:
Electronics that are capable of displaying a PPC ad. Supported devices include desktops/laptops, mobile devices and tablets.

Dimensions Tab:
Reporting section in AdWords that allows advertisers to segment and view data based on a variety of criteria. For example, you can view aggregate data by destination URL, geographic location, hour of day, day of week and more.

Display Campaign Optimizer (DCO):
Tool that increases conversions by automatically managing, targeting and bidding for campaigns on the Google Display Network. Simply set a CPA target and AdWords will do the rest. However, you must have enough historical conversion data in order to opt into this feature.

Display/Content Bid:
The maximum amount you’re willing to pay for an ad click on the Display Network.

Display/Content Network:
A collection of more than a million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. Google’s network is called the Display Network, while Bing’s network of sites is called the Content Network. In a lot of PPC circles, the terms are used interchangeably.

Display URL:
The webpage address that is shown with your ad. This is often different from your destination URL and much shorter. Just make sure you only have one display URL per ad group and that it uses the same root domain as your destination URL. AdWords allows 35 characters for Display URLs, and if your domain is longer than that they may show a shortened version.

Dynamic Ad Targeting:
Targeting method that matches relevant searches with ads generated directly from your website automatically.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI):
Feature that allows users to dynamically customize an ad to include keywords contained in user search queries.

Directory:
A site devoted to directory pages. The Yahoo directory is an example.

Directory Page:
A page of links to related Webpages.

Doorway:
(Gateway) A web page that is designed specifically to attract traffic from a search engine. A doorway page which redirects users (but not spiders) to another site or page is implementing cloaking.

Domain Authority:
A site with big authority, measured 0 to 100.

Domain:
The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com). It’s good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations because it shows commitment.

Duplicate Content:
Obviously, content which is similar or identical to that found on another website or page. A site may not be penalized for serving duplicate content, but it will receive little if any Trust from the search engines compared to the content that the SE considers being the original.

Engagement:
A general term used to classify interaction a consumer has with brand content, whether it be in an ad, on a brand’s site, or via a brand’s social media profile page.

Editorial Review:
Policies that govern the content and forms of advertising accepted by the search engines. Every time you create a new ad/keyword/etc, it will be submitted for editorial review to ensure guidelines are met.

Embedded Negatives:
Strategy that allows advertisers to show for every variation of a keyword, except for the keyword itself. This is a great way to help avoid cross-contamination of campaigns/ad groups housing similar or closely related terms along with ad groups that house different match types.

Enhanced CPC (ECPC):
Automatic bid management feature designed to increase your ROI by raising or lowering your bids for keywords that the system predicts are more likely to convert.

Exact Match:
The most specific of the keyword match types and triggers your ad when users type your keyword exactly as is and in the same order.

Ecommerce Site:
A website devoted to retail sales.

FBX:
Short for “Facebook Exchange” and can represent Right Hand Rail or News Feed placements.

Fold:
Description of where the ad was served on the page vertically, “above” would represent the top 50% of the page, “below” the bottom and “unknown” means it was not designated by the content provider.

Frequency:
The amount of times a user is served an impression.

Facebook Ads:
Online social advertising channel with over 1 billion people. Due to an abundance of demographic data, Facebook is a valuable asset to many PPC marketers.

Facebook Dynamic Ads:
Ads on Facebook that are automatically created for people who have expressed interest on your website, app, or elsewhere on the internet. You upload a product catalog and set up the campaign and it will run indefinitely.

Free Clicks:
Clicks that aren’t billed, such as actions taken on an interactive ads. For example, an expandable image as part of the ad format will result in “free clicks” when that interaction occurs.

Frequency Capping:
Feature that enables advertisers to create a threshold for the number of times your ads appear to the same person on the Display Network.

Feed:
Content which is delivered to the user via special websites or programs such as news aggregators.

FFA:
(Free for All) A page or site with many outgoing links to unrelated websites, containing little if any unique content. Link farms are only intended for spiders, and have little if any value to human users, and thus are ignored or penalized by the search engines.

Frames:
A web page design where two or more documents appear on the same screen, each within its own frame. Frames are bad for SEO because spiders sometimes fail to correctly navigate them. Additionally, most users dislike frames because it is almost like having two tiny monitors neither of which shows a full page of information at one time.

Goal:
A measure of something you want to track that you define as a success, normally a specific page load or site interaction.

Google Analytics:
Free service offering a simple way to track trends on your website with the addition of a small snippet of code placed on all pages of your website.

Geo-targeting:
Also known as Location Targeting, this campaign setting allows advertisers to specify the geographical countries, regions, states, etc. where their ads will be served.

Google AdWords:
Online advertising platform that offers pay-per-click advertising and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads and more.

Google Analytics:
Free website optimization service and interface that provides detailed statistics regarding visits to your site and behavioral analysis.

Google Checkout:
Google Checkout is a service that makes buying and selling across the web fast, convenient, and secure. When you utilize Google Checkout an icon will be displayed within your pay-per-click ad and this can build trust with users and increase your click-through rate.

Google Forwarding Number:
A unique phone number generated through Google that advertisers can use in their ads to help track business calls and performance.

Google Merchant Center:
A tool that helps advertisers upload product listings and feeds to be used for Google Shopping, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search.

Gateway Page:
(Doorway page) A web page that is designed to attract traffic from a search engine and then redirect it to another site or page. A doorway page is not exactly the same as cloaking, but the effect is the same in that users and search engines are served different content.

Gizmo:
(Gadget, widget) Small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a hit counter or IP address display. Gizmos can make good link bait.

Google Bomb:
The combined effort of multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect. The “miserable failure” – George Bush, and “greatest living American” – Steven Colbert Google bombs are famous examples.

Google Bowling:
Maliciously trying to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the “bad neighborhood” – Kind of like yelling “Good luck with that infection!” to your buddy as you get off the school bus – there is some controversy as to if this works or is just an SEO urban myth.

Google Dance:
The change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or algorithm. The cause of great angst and consternation for webmasters who slip in the SERPs. Or, the period of time during a Google index update when different data centers have different data.

Google Juice:
(Trust, authority, page rank) trust / authority from Google, which flows through outgoing links to other pages.

Googlebot:
Google’s spider program.

GYM:
(Google – Yahoo – Microsoft) the big three of search.

Home Page:
The page designated as the main point of entry of a Web site; typically, it welcomes visitors and introduces the purpose of the site, or the organization sponsoring it, and then provides links to other pages within the site.

HTML:
A set of codes called markup tags in a plain text file that determine what information is retrieved and how it is rendered by a browser.

Hit:
Once the standard by which web traffic was often judged, but now a largely meaningless term replaced by pageviews AKA impressions. A hit happens each time that a server sends an object – documents, graphics, include files, etc. Thus one pageview could generate many hits.

HTML:
The code part of your website that search engines read. Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.

Hub:
(Expert page) A trusted page with high quality content that links out to related pages.

HTML:
(Hyper Text Markup Language) – directives or “markup” which are used to add formatting and web functionality to plain text for use on the internet. HTML is the mother tongue of the search engines and should generally be strictly and exclusively adhered to on web pages.

Impressions:
The measure of how many times an ad was served.

Impression Share:
The number of impressions you have received divided by the estimated number of impressions that were available. Impression eligibility is based on a variety of factors, including: Quality Scores, Ad Rank, bids, settings, and approval status. Impression Share data is available at the keyword, ad group, and campaign level.

IP Targeting: Targeting using IP addresses. This can be done in two different ways, Current Customer Activation and IP Cloning.

IP Cloning:
Creating a look-a-like audience profile of users that display the same behaviors as current customers, using current customer IP addresses.

IAB:
Short for “Interactive Advertising Bureau” and is a non-profit trade association devoted exclusively to maximizing the use and effectiveness of interactive advertising and marketing.

In-Market Segments:
Google categorizes users as being in-market for a specific product or service by
taking into account clicks on related ads and subsequent conversions, along
with the content of the sites and pages they visit, and the recency and frequency
of the visits.

Inventory:
The aggregate number of opportunities near publisher content to display advertisement to visitors.

IP address:
Short for “Internet Protocol address” and is the numerical address assigned to each computer on the internet so that its location and activities can be distinguished from those of other computers.

ISP:
Short for “Internet Service Provider” and is a business or organization that provides internet access and related services.

Image Ads:
Formatted for the Google Display Network, these are ads that include graphics to help promote your business. Ads of this type support a variety of sizes and formats, such as static, animated or flash.

Impressions:
Number of people who see your PPC ad.

Impression Share:
Impression share (IS) is the number of impressions you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads’ targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores. Data is available at the campaign and ad group levels.

Instagram Ads:
Advertising platform for Instagram. You can create photo or video ads that can be placed natively in the platform. Instagram ads can be created to build brand awareness, drive website clicks and conversions, as well as lead to app installs and engagement.

Interest Categories:
Allows you to reach people based on their interests as they browse pages across the Google Display Network. You can select from a wide-ranging list of these categories — from autos and sports to travel and fashion — and Google will show ads to people who we think are interested in those categories.

Invalid Clicks:
Also known as Click Fraud, these are clicks on ads that Google considers to be illegitimate, such as unintentional clicks or clicks resulting from malicious software.

Impression:
(Page view) The event where a user views a webpage one time.

In bound Link:
(Inlink, incoming link) – Inbound links from related pages are the source of trust and page rank.

Index Noun:
A database of Webpages and their content used by the search engines.

Index Verb:
To add a web page to a search engine index.

Indexed Pages:
The pages on a site which have been indexed and stored by an Engine.

Inlink:
(Incoming link, inbound link) Inbound links from related pages are the source of trust and page rank.

Keyword Matching Options:
Keyword-level settings that help control how closely the keyword needs to match a person’s search term in order to trigger your ad. These include broad, modified broad, phrase, exact and negative match types. You also have the ability to specify whether or not you want your phrase and exact match terms to show for plurals, misspellings or close variants.

Keyword Tool:
Found in the AdWords interface, this tool helps advertisers find new keyword ideas and add them to your account. This can also be used to estimate traffic volume, identify negative keywords and determine competition level as well.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):
Short for “Key Performance Indicator” is the metric used to help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. Performance measurement that stems from your primary metric or what is most important to a particular business’s success. For example, conversions and cost-per-acquisition can be popular KPIs for many PPC advertisers.

Keyword:
Key phrase – The word or phrase that a user enters into a search engine.

Keyword Cannibalization:
The excessive reuse of the same keyword on too many web pages within the same site. This practice makes it difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.

Keyword Density:
The percentage of words on a web page which are a particular keyword. If this value is unnaturally high the page may be penalized.

Keyword Research:
The hard work of determining which keywords are appropriate for targeting.

Keyword Spam:
(Keyword stuffing) – Inappropriately high keyword density.

Landing Page:
The page that is used as the entrance to the website for a user.

Lat-Long:
Short for “latitude and longitude” which generally refers to coordinates used to pinpoint an exact location on the globe; used in advertising for targeting consumers on mobile devices according to their detectable latitude and longitude.

Landing Page:
Specified by the destination URL, this is the webpage where customers end up after they click your ad. It is important to note that landing page quality is an important factor in determining Quality Score.

Lead:
Desired action taken by customers, such as filling out a form, submitting an email or downloading a whitepaper, etc. that allows marketers to capture a user’s information for later use.

LinkedIn Ads:
A self-service advertising solution that allows advertisers to place text ads on prominent pages across LinkedIn’s professional network using robust targeting options and more.

Location Extensions:
Type of extension that includes a business address and phone number into text ads. These can be a great way to help attract more customers to local businesses.

Long-tail Keyword:
A specific keyword phrase that consists of 2 or more words. Most advertisers use long-tail keywords to target the customer at or near their buying stage. These also generally have less competition since they are more specific, which leads to reduced CPCs.

Landing Page:
The page that a user lands on when they click on a link in a SERP

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI):
This mouthful just means that the search engines index commonly associated groups of words in a document. SEOs refer to these same groups of words as “Long Tail Searches”. The majority of searches consist of three or more words strung together. See also “long tail”. The significance is that it might be almost impossible to rank well for “mortgage”, but fairly easy to rank for “second mortgage to finance monster truck team”. Go figure.

Link:
An element on a web page that can be clicked on to cause the browser to jump to another page or another part of the current page.

Link Bait:
A webpage with the designed purpose of attracting incoming links, often mostly via social media.

Link Building:
The activity and process of getting more inbound links to your website for improved search engine rankings – actively cultivating incoming links to a site.

Link Condom:
Any of several methods used to avoid passing link love to another page, or to avoid possible detrimental results of indorsing a bad site by way of an outgoing link, or to discourage link spam in user generated content.

Linkerati:
Internet users who are the most productive targets of link bait. The Linkerati includes – social taggers, forum posters, resource maintainers, bloggers and other content creators, etc. – who are most likely to create incoming links or link generating traffic (in the case of social networkers).

Link Exchange:
A reciprocal linking scheme often facilitated by a site devoted to directory pages. Link exchanges usually allow links to sites of low or no quality and add no value themselves. Quality directories are usually human edited for quality assurance.

Link Farm:
A group of sites which all link to each other.

Link Juice:
(Trust, authority, page rank)

Link Love:
An outgoing link, which passes trust, unencumbered by any kind of link condom.

Link Partner:
(Link exchange, reciprocal linking) Two sites which link to each other. Search engines usually don’t see these as high value links, because of the reciprocal nature.

Link Popularity:
A measure of the value of a site based upon the number and quality of sites that link to it

Link Spam:
(Comment Spam) Unwanted links such as those posted in user generated content like blog comments.

Link Text:
(Anchor text) The user visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.

Long Tail Keyword:
An uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with two or more words in the phrase. Small businesses should consider targeting long tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers. Common keywords such as ‘software’ are more competitive, and very hard to rank high for them in search.

Long Tail Longer:
More specific search queries that are often less targeted than shorter broad queries. For example, a search for “widgets” might be very broad while “red widgets with reverse threads” would be a long tail search. A large percentage of all searches are long tail searches/more words strung together. See also “long tail”. The significance is that it might be almost impossible to rank well for “mortgage”, but fairly easy to rank for “second mortgage to finance monster truck team.”

Makegoods:
Additional ad impressions which are negotiated in order to make up for the shortfall of ads delivered versus the commitments outlined in the approved insertion order.

Media Mix:
The combination of media channels an advertiser uses to disseminate its marketing message to consumers.

Medium:
Indicates the medium of the campaign or the product used (e.g. display, search, email, etc.).

Managed Placements:
Placement targeting lets AdWords advertisers choose individual spots in the Google content network where they’d like to see their ads displayed. These are basically individual sites that you want your ads to appear on.

Manual Bidding:
Default bidding option where CPC bids are set manually for a particular keyword, placement, etc. Advertisers also have the option to turn on Automatic Bidding if they don’t want to control their CPC bids manually.

Manual Tagging:
As opposed to auto tagging, this option allows advertisers to tag their destination URLs manually with “_utm” information that can be read and understood by Analytics or 3rd party tracking solutions. These are also used heavily in email blasts, promotional campaigns and more.

Match Type:
Matching option that allows advertisers to control when their ad triggers for a particular search query.

Message Extensions:
Feature that allows people to text you directly from your ad to book an appointment, get a quote, ask for information, or request a service.

My Client Center (MCC):
A powerful tool for handling multiple AdWords accounts. MCCs are ideal for large advertisers with more than one account.

Mashup:
A web page which consists primarily of single purpose software and other small programs (gizmos and gadgets) or possibly links to such programs. Mashups are quick and easy content to produce and are often popular with users and can make good link bait. Tool collection pages are sometimes mashups.

Metadata:
Data that tells search engines what your website is about.

Meta Description:
A brief description of fewer than 160 characters of the contents of a page and why someone would want to visit it. This is often displayed on search engine results pages below the page title as a sample of the content on the page.

Meta Keywords:
Previously used by search engines in the 90s and early 00s to help determine what a web page was about, the meta keywords tag is no longer used by any major search engines.

MozRank:
A logarithmic ranking provided by SEOmoz from 0-10.0 of the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a certain website or page on that website. A 10.0 is the best linked-to page on the internet, and a 0 has no recognized inbound links.

META Tags:
Statements within the HEAD section of an HTML page which furnishes information about the page. META information may be in the SERPs but is not visible on the page. It is very important to have unique and accurate META title and description tags, because they may be the information that the search engines rely upon the most to determine what the page is about. Also, they are the first impression that users get about your page within the SERPs.

Metric:
A standard of measurement used by analytics programs.

MFA Made for Advertisements:
Websites that are designed from the ground up as a venue for advertisements. This is usually, but not always a bad thing. TV programming is usually MFA.

Mirror Site:
An identical site at a different address.

Monetize:
To extract income from a site. AdSense ads are an easy way to Monetize a website.

New Visitor:
A Google Analytics term describing users who have not previously or recently visited your site.

Natural Search Results:
The search engine results which are not sponsored or paid for in any way.

NoFollow:
A command found in either the HEAD section of a web page or within individual link code, which instructs robots to not follow either any links on the page or the specific link. A form of link condom.

Noindex:
A command found in either the HEAD section of a web page or within individual link code, which instructs robots to not index the page or the specific link. A form of link condom.

Non-Reciprocal Link:
If site A links to site B, but site B does not link back to site A, then the link is considered non reciprocal. Search engines tend to give more value to non-reciprocal links than to reciprocal ones because they are less likely to be the result of collusion between sites.

Order:
References a submitted insertion order, multiple products can be contained within an order.

Organic:
Visitors who come to your site from organic or natural search engine results.

Opportunities Tab:
Located in the AdWords interface, this is a tool designed to help you get the most out of your PPC campaigns. Common suggestions include budget recommendations, potential keyword additions and more. These are all automated opportunities, so use the opportunities tab with caution.

Organic Link:
Organic links are those that are published only because the webmaster considers them to add value for users.

Outlink:
(Outgoing link)

Post Impression (or Post View) Conversions:
Users that viewed and ad and did not click, but visited client’s website at a later time, staying for longer than 60 seconds. (May be labeled as PI or PV 1-5 in reporting)

Post Click Conversions:
Users that clicked on an ad and stayed on the website for over 60 seconds.

Pacing:
The rate at which a digital ad campaign uses up its pre-set number of impressions (for a fixed/reserved campaign) or budget (for an auction-based/ unreserved campaign); campaigns can pace evenly or unevenly.

Pageview:
A Google Analytics term measuring the amount of times visitors arrive on individual pages of your website.

PC:
Short for “Post Click” and is a measure of conversions that happen on a client’s site after a click of an ad.

PI:
Short for “Post Impression” and is a measure of conversions that happen on a client’s site after an impression of an ad.

PII:
Short for “Personally Identifying Information” and is user data that can be used to contact the user either directly or through a lookup.

Pre-Roll:
An In-Stream Video Ad that occurs before the video content the user has requested.

Protocol:
A uniform set of rules that enable two devices to connect and transmit data to one another.

Publisher:
An individual or organization that prepares, issues, and disseminates content for public distribution or sale via one or more media.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC):
A method of advertising where the advertiser pays for each click received through the search engines.

Pay-Per-Click Management:
Service provided by certified agencies or individuals that help businesses achieve their PPC goals and maximize returns.

Phrase Match:
Keyword setting that allows ads to show only when someone’s search includes the exact phrase of your keyword or close variations of the specific keyword phrase.

Pinterest Ads:
Self-service advertising platform for Pinterest. You create pins for advertising or use your best performing pins, set your targeting, and then choose to pay for engagements or site visits.

Placement Exclusions:
Similar to a negative keyword, exclusions prevent your ads from appearing on individual websites or categories of websites. These are designed to help increase relevancy and control of ad placement on the Display Network.

Price Extensions:
Feature for PPC search ads that showcase your services or products by linking people directly to what interests them on your site. Price extensions appear below your text ad and can have up to 8 cards of different options and prices.

Product Listing Ads (PLA):
Search ads that include rich product information, such as images, pricing, and business names, without requiring additional keywords or ad text. Ads of this nature appear under the Google Shopping results automatically for consumer queries relating to one of your product offerings.

Promotion Extensions:
Feature of PPC search ads that showcases promotional offers below your text ads. Promotion extensions highlight deals for your customers to help generate new sales for your business.

PageRank:
(PR) A value between 0 and 1 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies link popularity and trust among other (proprietary) factors. Often confused with Toolbar PageRank.

Pay For inclusion PFI:
The practice of charging a fee to include a website in a search engine or directory. While quite common, usually what is technically paid for is more rapid consideration to avoid Googles prohibition on paid links.

Portal:
A web service which offers a wide array of features to entice users to make the portal their “home page” on the web. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are portals.

PPA (Pay Per Action):
Very similar to Pay Per Click except publishers only get paid when click throughs result in conversions.

PPC (Pay Per Click):
A contextual advertisement scheme where advertisers pay add agencies (such as Google) whenever a user clicks on their add. AdWords is an example of PPC advertising.

Proprietary Method:
(Bullshit, snake oil) sales term often used by SEO service providers to imply that they can do something unique to achieve “Top Ten Rankings”.

Quality Score:
A complex and partially hidden formula used by search engines that takes CTR and several other factors into account in order to decide whether your keywords are relevant to your ads and landing page. This is multiplied with your max CPC to calculate your Ad Rank to see what your ad position will be.

RFP:
Is simply short for “Request For Proposal,” which is when a media buyer provides documentation to a media vendor detailing the buyer’s needs regarding a campaign in order for the vendor to provide a media plan which the buyer can purchase to meet those needs. i.e. Do not tell your client “I will submit an RFP” or “I will send you an RFP.” You lose credibility. Say instead, “I will put together a proposal” or “Let me send you a proposal that outlines the targeting strategy that I think will work best for your campaign.” You want your client to think that you are creating the proposal yourself and know the product you are selling.

Reach:
The total number of unique users who will be served a given ad.

Recency:
A measure of how long ago a user was placed in a data element.

Referral Link:
The referring page, or referral link is a place from which the user clicked to get to the current page.

Referring URL:
The address of the webpage that a user previously visited prior to following a link.

Repeat Visitor:
Unique visitor who has accessed a website more than once over a specific time period.

Return on Investment (ROI):
Short for “Return On Investment” and indicates the monetary value associated to the campaign (there are many ways to calculate this but generally it is a ratio of spend to lead value). Ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested.

RON:
Short for “Run Of Network” that indicates zero restrictions on the audience or content being targeted and may include any site or user in a network.

RTB:
Short for “Real Time Bidding” and is a means by which advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via programmatic instantaneous auction, similar to financial markets.

Remarketing:
Allows advertisers to show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse other sites on the Display Network. This creates a network of high-intent and relevant users that have the opportunity to click on your ad and return to your site to make a purchase.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA):
Feature that lets you target people who have previously visited your site with your search ads and optimize your PPC bids to increase the likelihood of reaching the audience. Targeting and optimizing remarketing lists can lead to highly qualified customers visiting your site.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS):
Ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of advertising (PPC) money invested.

Reciprocal link:
(Link exchange, link partner) Two sites which link to each other. Search engines usually don’t see these as high value links, because of the reciprocal and potentially incestuous nature.

Redirect:
Any of several methods used to change the address of a landing page such as when a site is moved to a new domain, or in the case of a doorway.

Regional Long Tail (RLT):
A multi word keyword term which contains a city or region name. Especially useful for the service industry.

Robots.txt:
A file in the root directory of a website use to restrict and control the behavior of search engine spiders.

ROI (Return on Investment):
One use of analytics software is to analyze and quantify return on investment, and thus cost / benefit of different schemes.

Search Impression Share:
The share of impressions won within a Google Search campaign and can be used to determine if additional reach is possible.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
Short for “Search Engine Marketing” which is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine result pages. Form of online marketing that involves the promotion of web properties by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages and through paid online advertisements like PPC.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Short for “Search Engine Optimization” which is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Process of increasing organic traffic from search engines results pages. All major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content are analyzed and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to the user.

Session:
A session is a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given time frame.

Session Duration:
A Google Analytics term indicating the length of time the visitor is exposed to a specific ad, Web page or Website during a single session.

Source:
Indicates the source of the campaign, ie Google, Phoenix New Times, etc.

SSP:
Short for “Supply Side Platform.” A piece of software used to sell advertising in an automated fashion; SSPs are most often used by online publishers to help them sell display, video and mobile ads.

Supply Vendor:
The name of the inventory source that was accessed.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP):
The listings a user sees in the search engines after typing in a search query. The results typically consist of a series of Organic listings and Paid or sponsored search ads.

Search Network:
A group of search-related websites where your ads can appear, including Google search sites and search partners.

Search Partners:
Websites partnered with Google to show PPC advertisements on the Search Network.  They can be opted out of in the Google interface, but advertisers don’t have the ability to bid exclusively on search partners.

Search Query:
A basic search query is what the user enters when searching on any search engine.  If their search includes the keywords that you are bidding on your ad will appear (depending on match types and all of the other targeting options, of course).

Search Query Report (SQR):
Also known as a “search terms report”, this allows advertisers to review the actual search queries that triggered their PPC ads. This report is great for identifying new profitable keyword ideas and blocking irrelevant queries.

Seller Central:
Amazon’s site for third-party merchants to manage their items being sold on Amazon’s marketplace.

Seller Central Sponsored Product Ads:
The product display advertising option for third-party merchants on the Amazon Marketplace.

Seller Central Placement Ads:
Amazon display ads shown specifically on the Seller Central site to Seller Central merchants.

Seller Ratings Extensions:
An automated extension shown underneath PPC text ads on Google. Once launched, seller ratings showcase the overall rating of a business on a 5-star scale or in an “XX%” positive format. The ratings can come from Google sources and approved third-parties.

Shared Budgets:
AdWords budgeting option that allows advertisers to specify a particular amount for a group of campaigns to spend in a given day. This can be a good way to avoid spreading budget too thin, particularly in smaller accounts.

Sitelinks Extensions:
Feature that displays links to different pages of a website beneath the ad text. Sitelinks can appear in ads at the top and bottom of the SERPs and for some search partners.  Sitelinks need to direct users to a different destination URL than what your main ad points to.

Snapchat Ads:
The self-service advertising platform on Snapchat. Advertising options include videos, location-based filters, and interactive video lenses that can increase brand awareness, lead users to landing pages, install apps, or drive views to long-form video.

Smart Bidding:
A subset of automated bidding strategies that uses Google’s machine learning to optimize bidding in each and every auction. There are four smart bidding strategies: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Enhanced CPC.

Structured Snippet Extensions:
Feature that appears alongside your PPC search ads that showcase a list of products or services with a predefined header. The structured snippet predefined headers include brands, destinations, and courses as well as several other header options.

Sandbox:
There has been debate and speculation that Google puts all new sites into a “sandbox,” preventing them from ranking well for anything until a set period of time has passed. The existence or exact behavior of the sandbox is not universally accepted among SEOs.

Scrape:
Copying content from a site, often facilitated by automated bots.

Search Engine (SE):
A program, which searches a document or group of documents for relevant matches of a user’s keyword phrase and returns a list of the most relevant matches. Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo search the entire internet for relevant matches.

Search Engine Spam:
Pages created to cause search engines to deliver inappropriate or less relevant results. Search Engine Optimizers are sometimes unfairly perceived as search engine Spammers. Of course, in some cases they actually are.

SEM:
Short for search engine marketing, SEM is often used to describe acts associated with researching, submitting and positioning a Web site within search engines to achieve maximum exposure of your Web site. SEM includes things such as search engine optimization, paid listings and other search-engine related services and functions that will increase exposure and traffic to your Web site.

SEO:
Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that users will visit the site. It is common practice for Internet users to not click past the first few pages of search results, therefore high rank in SERPs is essential for obtaining traffic for a site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be indexed and favorably ranked by the search engine.

SERP:
Search Engine Results Page

Site Map:
A page or structured group of pages which link to every user accessible page on a website, and hopefully improves site usability by clarifying the data structure of the site for the users. An XML sitemap is often kept in the root directory of a site just to help search engine spiders to find all of the site pages.

SMM (Social Media Marketing):
Website or brand promotion through social media.

SMP (Social Media Poisoning):
A term coined by Rand Fishkin – any of several (possibly illegal) black hat techniques designed to implicate a competitor as a spammer – For example, blog comment spamming in the name / brand of a competitor.

Sock Puppet:
An online identity used to either hide a person’s real identity or to establish multiple user profiles.

Social Bookmark:
A form of Social Media where users’ bookmarks are aggregated for public access.

Social Media:
Various online technologies used by people to share information and perspectives. Blogs, wikis, forums, social bookmarking, user reviews and rating sites (Digg, Reddit) are all examples of Social Media.

Social Media Marketing (SMM):
Website or brand promotion through social media.

Social Media Poisoning (SMP):
A term coined by Rand Fishkin – any of several (possibly illegal) black hat techniques designed to implicate a competitor as a spammer – For example blog comment spamming in the name / brand of a competitor

Spam Ad Page:
(SpamAd page) A Made for AdSense/Advertisement page which uses scraped or machine generated text for content and has no real value to users other than the slight value of the adds. Spammers sometimes create sites with hundreds of these pages.

Spamdexing Spamdexing or Search Engine Spamming:
The practice of deceptively modifying web pages to increase the chance of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a dishonest manner.

Spammer:
A person who uses spam to pursue a goal.

Spider:
(Bot, crawler) A specialized bot used by search engines to find and add web pages to their indexes.

Spider Trap:
An endless loop of automatically generated links which can “trap” a spider program. Sometimes intentionally used to prevent automated scraping or e-mail address harvesting.

Splash Page – Often animated, graphics pages without significant textual content. Splash pages are intended to look flashy to humans, but without attention to SEO may look like dead ends to search engine spiders, which can only navigate through text links. Poorly executed splash pages may be bad for SEO and often a pain in the ass for users.

Splog:
Spam Blog which usually contains little if any value to humans and is often machine generated or made up of scraped content.

Static Page:
A web page without dynamic content or variables such as session IDs in the URL. Static pages are good for SEO work in that they are friendly to search engine spiders.

Stickiness:
Mitigation of bounce rate. Website changes that entice users to stay on the site longer, and view more pages improve the sites “stickiness”.

Supplemental Index:
(Supplemental results) Pages with very low page rank, which are still relevant to a search query, often appear in the SERPs with a label of Supplemental Result. Googles representative’s say that this is not indicative of a penalty, only low page rank.

Time On Site:
A Google Analytics term measuring the average length of time a visitor spends accessing your site within a specific time period.

Traffic:
The flow of data over a network, or visitors to a website.

Traffic Source:
A Google Analytics term describing where your site traffic is coming from.

Text Ad:
The standard type of AdWords ad, which typically includes a headline (25 characters in length), two lines of descriptive text (35 characters per line), and a display and destination URL (the display URL is limited to 35 characters).

Text Placeholders:
Placeholder variables, such as {param2} and {param3}, allow users to simultaneously update multiple ads in your campaign all at once. One or more placeholders can be added to the ad title, ad text, display URL, or destination URL of multiple ads.

Topics Targeting:
Targeting method that allows advertisers to show ads on other websites around the Display Network that feature content related to your selected topics. Topics targeting is based on the content of the websites and how Google classifies them.

Tracking Code:
Small snippet of HTML added to a “thank you” page that shows what happens after a customer clicks on an ad and enables the free conversion-tracking tool.

Traffic Estimator:
Free AdWords tool that predicts how well a particular keyword could perform based on local and global search volume. Advertisers can also use this tool to research average prices and ad positions as well.

TrueView Video Ads:
Available in in-stream, in-slate, in-search and/or in-display formats, these are video ads through AdWords that give viewers the choice over which messages they want to see and when.

Text Link:
A plain HTML link that does not involve graphic or special code such as flash or java script.

Time on Page:
The amount of time that a user spends on one page before clicking off. An indication of quality and relevance.

Toolbar PageRank (PR):
A value between 0 and 10 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies page importance and is not the same as page rank. Toolbar PageRank is only updated a few times a year and is not a reliable indicator of current status. Often confused with PageRank.

Traffic:
The visitors to your site.

Title:
The title of a page on your website, which is enclosed in a