Visions InfoLine - Web Page and Search Engine Terms

Applet
A small program written in Java (Java Applet) which is part of a web page and is run by the browser

ASP
An Active Server Page is an HTML document that contains embedded server-side scripting. Used for web based online databases

Browser
Used to view web sites and navigate the World Wide Web and other Internet resources

CGI
The CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is the standard by which external programs can interface with a HTTP web server

CGI Program
CGI programs can be designed to handle an information request to a database, take the results and assemble an HTML document and return this document to your browser

Client
A computer program or process which makes requests for information from another computer program or process. Search engine spiders are types of clients and web browsers are client programs

Click through
The process of clicking on a hyperlink link from one web page to another page on a different site. This also applies by clicking on a banner ad which takes you to another site

Cloaking
Web Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. It hides the source code of the optimised pages so the code can not be copied

Comment
The HTML <!-- and --> tags are used to hide text from displaying in the browser. It can be used as a marker for coping html source code beween two points or to hide javascript code from non-compliant browsers

Cookie
A small file that is added "windows temporary internet files folder" so that the site can identify the visitor and is also used to track movements around the web

Crawler
When you submit your site to a search engine it will send a bot or crawler via an automated process to retrieve the page that you submitted, this is what's commonly know as spidering a site

Dead Link
A dead link is when a hyperlink link is clicked on and the browser returns a "404 error page not found", this could be because the server is down at the time the link was clicked on or the page has moved or no longer exists.

De-listing
The removal of a web site or web pages from a search engine's index.

Description
The web page description text is displayed with the page title and URL by a search engines search results

Directory
Directories are a list of web sites compiled by human editors and only add sites to the database of the directory which they think are relevant to the category which you choose for your site

Domain Name
A domain name is your web address on the Internet (eg www.yousitename.co.uk) and no two sites can ever have the same domain name. The Technical side of a domain name is a way of identifying and locating computers on the Internet. Computers use Internet Protocol (IP) address (e.g. 194.326.22.20) to locate each other on the Internet and domain names were developed to let us use easily remembered words and phrases to identify these Internet addresses
Each domain name replaces a string of meaningless numbers (IP address) with a simple word or expression

Domain Registration
Domain Names are similar to trademarks and UK limited companies. Businesses need to register a domain name to protect their name so that their competition doesn't use it. Your domain name can be used as your website or just for email

Dynamic content
Dynamic content is database Information shown on web pages which changes automatically when the data base is updated. URL's which end with .asp .cgi or .shtml are examples of dymanic content.

e-Commerce
The buying and selling of products and services over the Internet

HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol are the letters which start a Web address and are used as the protocol to allow sites to be linked at the click of a button

JavaScript
A scripting language that allows lines of Java code to be inserted into HTML scripts

MySQL
MySQL is a database management system and a database is a structured collection of data. It may be anything from a list of products on your site or the large amounts of information in a corporate network

ODBC Database
A connection to a Microsoft SQL Server 7 or to a Microsoft Access database

Server
A high specification computer designed for high speed content and delivery over the internet

URL
Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of a particular computer or part of a server where particular data can be found

WWW
The World Wide Web which links users from one network to another by clicking on highlighted or underlined text