Search Engine Optimization Bible, Second Edition

Glossary

8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format

A variable-length character encoding for Unicode. It is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is consistent with ASCII.

A/B testing

A method of advertising testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples.

Ad groups

A group of ads that target one set of keywords or sites.

Adversarial search

A search algorithm that looks for all possible solutions to a problem, much like finding all the possible solutions in a game.

Affiliate programs

A method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his or her efforts.

alt attributes

HTML tags that provide text as an alternative to the graphics on a web page.

alt tags

See alt attributes.

Alternative tags

See alt attributes.

Analytics

Measurement of web site statistics such as the number of visitors, where they arrived from, and how much time they spent on a web site.

Anchor tags

Text used to create links to other pages. Text is displayed as a link instead of the URL for the link being displayed. An anchor tag can point users to another web page, a file on the Web, or even an image or sound file. You're probably most familiar with the anchor tags used to create links to other web sites.

Anchor text

See anchor tags.

Anonymous FTP

A file transfer protocol that enables a user to retrieve documents, ...