resources
glossary
(glos'a-ri) n., a dictionary of technical words for a given work.
Use our glossary to help better understand some of the words used when discussing the various aspects of web development that are not necessarily part of one's common vocabulary.
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Ranking
The position of a page within the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page.
Ranking Agent
Type of software application that makes multiple requests to different search engines in an attempt to see where a site lies within the returned results. Abusing these types of applications can result in penalties against the domains using them.
If your clients are using ranking agents, be sure to remind them to control application requests (to only once or twice per month). Also keep in mind there may be a huge number of requests at any given time by multiple domains using these applications. Ranking agents can put a real strain on search engine databases.
Reach
The activity of attracting a target audience or user base to a website.
Read-Only Access
File system permission that allows a file to only be read and not changed.
Read-Write Access
File system permission that allows a file to be read and changed.
Reciprocal Links
Shared links between websites.
Referrals
Stat that shows where users came from to get to a page. This is useful to see what search engines or directories a user accessed to get to a web page, in order to better optimize for specific engines and directories. Referrals are not recorded when users come to a site by directly typing the URL into the URL slot.
Referring Site
URL with the hyperlink activated to get to another page. The Referring Site Report is how you can tell if your site is getting any requests coming from the search engines and other sites sending your site traffic.
Registration
When a web site is submitted to the search engines, its URL is registered within the search engines. A simple test to find out if a site is registered within a search engine's database is to search for the site's URL in the search engine's search bar.
Relative Path
Path relative to the root web directory. For example: if the absolute path (relative from "/" on the server) for a sub-directory within the web directory is /usr/web/sub_dir/ then the relative path to the web directory is "sub_dir/".
Relevant Textual Content
textual content within a web document related to the main focus of that document. The amount of relevant textual information a web document has is important to the search engines, the more relative textual content a web site has, the better ranking it will receive within the engines.
Relevant Traffic
Visitors coming to a site looking for relevant information to that site. Relevant traffic can be measured by calculating the web site's "stickiness" level.
Request
Signal sent by a client to a server for a specific web object (i.e. web page, image, flash movie, cookie, etc.).
Resource Requested
The file being called for by HTTP.
Robot
Program that will perform an automated task. See spider.
Robots.txt
This file is used to communicate with search engine spiders (a.k.a. "robots"), telling them what they cannot have access to. This file is only a suggestion to the spiders, and is not a way to secure the file system.
ROI
Abbreviation for return on investment.
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