A crawl page that only links to doorway pages. Usually called “hallway page”, sometimes shortened to “hallway”.

Search terms or keywords that are short and popular. These terms received the name "head terms" because it was based on a bell-curve distribution of user generated keyword usage. The usage displayed the most popular or most-used words at the "head" end of a bell-curve graph. The opposite of a head term is a long tail term, named for the long end of the bell curve. These terms are searched by fewere people and are thought to be used by specific niche marketing segment.

Website copy that is purposefully formatted so that it cannot be seen by users, but can be read by robots. The intention is to increase a page's keyword density without making the page less attractive to users. Most hidden text techniques are very easy for search engines to detect, and can result the Google death penalty.

A homepage is the first page of the website. The function of the homepage is to welcome visitors and direct them to other pages on the site. The homepage typically collects the majority of PageRank Score since its URL is where most other sites will link to. Other names for the homepage include main page and front page.

A much-used term in academic search engineering literature to distinguish between “Web document collections” on a systemic level. A host is not necessarily the same as a site. Hosts are generally defined to be either entire domains (example.com) or sub-domains (sub1.example.com). A domain to which one or more sub-domains belong would be treated as multiple individual hosts, distinct from one another. A host is easier to identify than a Web site, which may be only a part of a host’s content.

A Web site, individual, or group of individuals systematically creating and/or promoting unfavorable content about a brand or personal name. Example: A Web site is a hostile entity if it produces or promotes more than one unfavorable article in a name space.

A search result populated by multiple unfavorable articles from numerous sources, usually all being hostile entities.

An abbreviation for HyperText Markup Language.

An acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is a set of rules that govern how files are transferred via the internet, particularly when displayed on web pages.

See cookie.

Allows webmasters and PPC advertisers to discover new audiences or sites to target. Also, enables them to calculate conversions and ROI for future ad campaigns. Included in most web analytics packages.

Stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure."

A document that links out to many other documents devoted to a single topic. Think of any category page in a major directory like Yahoo! or DMOZ. All the documents linked to are assumed to be authorities (sort of a circular logic). In Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm (as well as the CLEVER, ExpertRank, and Edison algorithms) a hub is a document about a specific topic that links to many experts in the topic. Cf. Expert.

A link from one web page to another, and a great opportunity to improve one's search engine rankings.

The basic software language of the World Wide Web, HyperText Markup Language defines and places the elements of a web page. Originally based upon SGML, HyperText Markup Language was created by Tim Berners-Lee as the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (commonly known as CERN), a particle physics laboratory on the border of France and Switzerland. Usually abbreviated as HTML.