Glossary: A to C

Access provider – an organisation that provides access to the Internet. Also known as Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Ad Pimp – A website that has too many advertisements on it in an obvious attempt to monetize the site.
Ad Rank – Google AdWords multiplies Quality Score (QS) and the maximum CPC (Max CPC) to reach an Ad Rank for each ad.
Added Value Affiliates – Provide a value-added service to visitors in addition to affiliate links and affiliate content.
AdSense Link Clicking Bots – Automated programs that try to spoof random IP addresses to click through AdWords displayed on a site.
Adsense – Google’s Cost Per Click (CPC) based advertising system.
Affiliate Sniper – People who save money on purchases by switching your affiliate ID with their own.
Agent Name – An agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page.
Aggregator – Software that lets you automatically download content to your computer
Algorithm – A mathematical formula used to determine the value of a page when compared against others.
ALT Text – The text that appears when you put your mouse on top of an image or a picture.
AltaVista – Used to be the #1 search engine until Google came along.
Anchor Text – Also known as Link Text, the clickable text of a hyperlink.
Apache –  An open source Web server package, mostly used on Linux and Solaris platforms.
API – Application Programming Interface.
Applet – A self-contained mini-executable program, such as one written in the Java programming language.
Application servers – Software used to provide an interface between systems to enable Web services.
ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard for digital representation of letters, numbers, and control codes; understood by most computers.
Ask – One of the major search engines, along with Yahoo and MSN, after Google.
ASP – Dual meanings: Microsoft Active Server Pages, or Application Service Provider
ATF – “Above the Fold”. This is the part of the user’s screen that is always displayed.
Attachment – A file (such as a document, or image) which is delivered as part of an email message.
Audioblog – An audio web log in MP3 format and available for download to an MP3 player or a computer.
AUP – “Acceptable Use Policy”. A binding document signed by all users that explains the rules of Internet use at a Company, or an institution.
Authority Site – A site that has many In-Bound links coming to it, and very little outbound links.
Auto responder – An email message that is sent automatically in response to a message to another email address.
Back/Forward – Buttons in most browsers’ Tool Button Bar, upper left. BACK returns you to the document previously viewed. FORWARD goes to the next document, after you go BACK.
Back link – A text link to your website from another website. Also called inbound links or IBLs. If someone else links to your site, this is a backlink
Backup – To make a second copy of a file as a safety measure.
Bandwidth – A Term used to describe how much data you can send through a connection to the Net.
Banned – A term that means a site has been removed from a search engine’s index.
Banner Blindness – The act of web visitors to ignoring advertisements on the site whether it is a graphic or text ad.
BAP – “Blog and Ping”. A method used to get the search engines to quickly index your blog’s content.
BBS – “Bulletin Board Service”. A forum for users to browse and exchange information. BIOS – Basic Input-Output System. This is the small but fundamental program which starts up your computer and allows you to access your software programs.
Bit – An acronym for BInary digiT. It is the basic unit of information in the computer world. A bit is a digit in binary form and carries one of two values, 0 or 1.
Black Hat SEO – A term referring to the practice of  SEO that is used to ‘fool’ search engine rankings. These techniques are used to gain an advantage over your competition.
Blind Traffic – This is traffic that is extremely low quality often by low relevance pages.
Blog – A “Web Log” that is updated frequently and is usually the opinion of one person. Blogged – Term referring to have bookmarked a blog in your browser.
Blook – A book that is serialized on a blog site. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts.
Bookmark – A word or picture ‘marked’ so that you can jump to it by name from within a list. Also used by browsers to mark frequently visited web sites.
Favourites – Way in browsers to store in your computer direct links to sites you wish to return to.
Boot – To switch on a computer. If the machine is re-started whilst running, this is called ‘re-booting’.
Bot – Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Browse – To move around the interent
Browser – Software application used to browse the internet – Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the 2 most popular browsers.
BTF – “Below the Fold”. This is the part of the user’s screen that is hidden unless the user scrolls down on the page.
Bumping – The act of posting on old forum threads, to bring them up to the top
Byte – A single computer character, generally eight bits.
Cache (1) – A copy of web pages stored within a search engine’s database.
Cache (2) – A section of computer memory set aside for storing frequently-used data from a disk drive, speeding up the transfer of information.
CAPTCHA – Stands for : Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
CSS – “Cascading style sheets”.  An extension to HTML which allows style features (colour, font size, spacing, and page-layering) to be specified for certain elements of a hypertext document.
Catablog – A blog that describes products for sale.
CD-R – “Compact Disk-Recordable”. Blank compact disks on which data can be recorded just once.
CD-ROM – “Compact Disk-Read Only Memory”. A record like storage medium that uses digital and optical laser technology to store about 600Mb of text, pictures, and sound on a single disk.
CD-RW – “Compact Disc Re-Writable format”. These are blank compact disks that can be recorded over and over again.
CGI – “Common Gateway Interface”. A system installed on Web servers to automatically process information entered into web page forms.
Checkbox – A small square box which, when clicked on, displays a cross or tick to show that an option has been selected.
Click Distance – The minimum number of clicks it takes for a visitor to get from one area of your site to another
Click Pirates – People who click on ads, knowingly, stealing from advertisers, as they encourage others to join with them.
Click Through – The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser’s destination.
Clickprint – Derived from the amount of time a user spends on a Web site and the number of pages viewed, a clickprint is a unique online fingerprint that can help a vendor identify return visitors, curb fraud, and collect personal information for “customer service.” aka invasive marketing
Clipboard – A section of a computer’s memory where you can temporarily copy chunks of text, data, graphics, or pictures. Once in the clipboard, the item can be pasted into another part of a document, or transferred to another application.
Cloaking – Describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Clustering – In search engine search results pages, clustering is restricting each represented website to one or two listings.
Content Networks – A more politically correct way to say Link Farm.
Content Repurposing – A more politically correct way to say scraping a site for content.
CLI – “Contextual Link Inventory”. Text links that are shown depending on the content that appears around them.
Conversion – Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site, such as buying a product or service, filling out a contact form, or registering for a newsletter. Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
Conversion Optimization – Transforms your site into a selling tool – your site logically leads visitors through the sales cycle and closes sale.
Conversion Rate -The number of visitors to a website that end up performing a specific action that leads to a conversion. This could be a product purchase, newsletter sign up or anything where information is submitted.
Converting Search Phrase – A phrase that converts traffic into money.
Cookie – Information stored on a user’s computer by a website.
Copy – Text found on a web page.
CPT – “Cost per Thousand”. The cost for each thousand impressions of your ad.
CPA – “Cost Per Action”.  The price paid for each visitor’s actions from a paid search.
CPC – “Cost Per Click”. The amount it will cost each time a user selects your phrase or keyword.
Crawler – A bot from a search engine that reads the text found on a website in order to determine what the website is about. Also called a “Spider”, or a “Bot”.
Cross Linking – Having multiple websites linking to each other.
CSS – “Cascading Style Sheets”.  Used to define the look and navigation of a website.
CTA – “Content Targeted Advertising”. It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR – “Click Through Rate”. The value associated to the amount of times a paid ad is viewed.
Cybrarian (slang) – A person who finds, collects, and manages information available on the Internet.