Search Engine Terms J-N

Java

A computer programming language whose programs can run on a number of different types of computer and/or operating system. Used extensively to produce applets for web pages.

 

Javascript

An simple interpreted computer language used for small programming tasks within HTML web pages. The scripts are normally interpreted (or run) on the client computer by the web browser. Some search engines have been known to index these scripts, presumably erroneously.

 

Keyword

A word which forms (part of) a search engine query.

 

Keyword Density

A property of the text in a web page which indicates how close together the keywords appear. Some search engines use this property for Positioning. Analysers are available which allow comparisons between pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword densities to those found in high ranking pages.

 

Keyword Domain Name

The use of keywords as part of the URL to a website. Positioning is improved on some search engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.

 

Keyword Phrase

A phrase which forms (part of) a search engine query.

 

Keyword Purchasing

The buying of search keywords from search engines, usually to control banner ad. placement. All the major search engines (except EuroSeek and GoTo) insist that keyword purchasing is only used for banner ad. placement, and doesn't influence search results. The display of banner ads. for bought keywords can be studied using a service called Bannerstake from Thomson and Thomson at http://www.namestake.com. which returns the banner ads. displayed when particular queries are used.

 

Keyword Stuffing

The repeating of keywords and keyword phrases in META tags or elsewhere.

 

Link Popularity

See page popularity.

Log File

A file maintained on a server in which details of all file accesses are stored. Analysing log files can be a powerful way to find out about a web site's visitors, where they come from and which queries are used to access a site.Various software packages are available to analyse log files, and some are listed below.

 

Sane Solutions provide NetTracker, which is good at analysing queries from log files. A free program called WebLog is available at http://www.awsd.com. See also the reviews at http://www.bellacoola.com/html/sample_reports.htm.

 

LookSmart

A medium-sized directory. The URL is http://www.looksmart.com.

 

Lycos

One of the largest search engines, Lycos appears to be moving towards becoming a directory and is using the Open Directory for some search results. It can be slow to index new sites. The lycos spider ignores meta tags in pages. Lycos can be found at http://www.lycos.com.

 

Metacrawler

A meta search engine found at http://www.metacrawler.com. Results from various search engines are summarised in an easy to read form.

 

Metafind

A meta search engine found at http://www.metafind.com.

 

Meta Search

A search of searches. A query is submitted to more than one search engine or directory, and results are reported from all the engines, possibly after removal of duplicates and sorting. Also the meta search engine of the same name, found at http://www.metasearch.com.

 

Meta Search Engine

A server which passes queries on to many search engines and/or directories and then summarises all the results. Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Infind, Metacrawler, Metafind and Metasearch are examples of meta search engines.

 

Meta tag

A construct placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information which is not visible to browsers. The most common meta tags (and those most relevant to search engines) are KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION.

 

The KEYWORDS tag allows the author to emphasise the importance of certain words and phrases used within the page. Some search engines will respond to this information - others will ignore it. Don't use quotes around the keywords or keyphrases.

 

The DESCRIPTION tag allows the author to control the text of the summary displayed when the page appears in the results of a search. Again, some search engines will ignore this information.

 

The HTTP-EQUIV meta tag is used to issue HTTP commands, and is frequently used with the REFRESH tag to refresh page content after a given number of seconds. Gateway pages sometimes use this technique to force browsers to a different page or site. Most search engines are wise to this, and will index the final page and/or reduce the ranking. Infoseek has a strong policy against this technique, and they might penalize your site, or even ban it.

Other common meta tags are GENERATOR (usually advertising the software used to generate the page) and AUTHOR (used to credit the author of the page, and often containing e-mail address, homepage URL and other information).

 

Mining Company

A large directory spread over many different URLs The main URL is http://www.miningco.com.

 

Mirror Sites

Multiple copies of web sites or web pages, often on different servers. The process of registering these multiple copies with search engines is often treated as spamdexing, because it artificially increases the relevancy of the pages. Filters such as the Infoseek Sniffer now remove multiple mirrors from the indexes.

 

Misspellings

People quite often spell words incorrectly when using search engines. Pages which use common misspellings will quite often receive extra hits, so it is a useful technique to include common misspellings of words in alt tags, keywords, page names and titles. A similar effect occurs when spaces are missed out and words are accidentally joined together.

 

MultiCrawl

A parallel search engine which offers users their own branded versions. http://www.multicrawl.com.

 

Multiple Domain Names

The use of several extra domains to provide gateway pages or gateway sites to the main site.

 

Multiple Keyword Tags

The use of more than one Keywords META tag in order to try to increase the relevancy of the best keywords on a page. This is not recommended. It may be detected as a spamming technique, or all but one of the tags may simply be ignored.

 

Multiple Titles

It used to be possible to repeat the HTML title tag in the header section of a page several times to improve search engine positioning. Most search engines now detect this trick.

 

Netfind

See AOL Netfind.

 

NewHoo

See the Open Directory Project.

 

Northern Light

A search engine with an additional "pay to access" special collection of business, health and consumer publication articles. The first search engine to ban meta search engines from its database. The URL is http://www.northernlight.com.