Web Jargon

A list of some commom web jargon and definitions (in alphabetical order).  These words are thrown around so freely that sometimes people forget that not everyone knows the meaning. 

Bots – See “Crawler”

Browser – software for using the internet.  Common browsers are Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari.  Each are similar but some render things differently than the other browsers.

Crawler – also called bots, robots, or spider.  A program that browses the web.  Search engine crawlers index pages for search engines.  There are other types of crawlers as well.  A not-so-friendly crawler may be looking for e-mails to use for spam. 

HTML -HyperText Markup Language.  The main language for web pages.  The code shown under the “Meta tag” definition is an example of HTML.

IP – Internet Protocol address.  A number assigned in a computer network for communication.  We want the IP address that was assigned to you by your internet provider.  This can change.

Keyword – a term important in describing your website or web page.  Such as “nature photography” or “handmade greeting cards”.

Meta tags – items in the code at the beginning of webpage that give information about the website or page.  Some examples are description, copyright, and keywords.  The tags look like this when you are viewing the code:

            <meta name=”description” content=”A short blurb about my page content.” />

PageRank – a rank from 0 to 10 given to your website found on the Google Toolbar.  It is a rough guide of how important Google considers that webpage, the higher numbers being more important.  A page with higher rank is more likely to appear at the top of search results.  The official PageRank is an algorithm.  PageRank is a trademark of Google.

Robots – See “Crawler”

SEO – Search Engine Optimization.  Perfecting your website to appear earlier in search engine listings for your targeted customers.  Example:  We sell nature photography mainly of subjects in Oregon.  So we want to be search engine optimized to appear in the first page of results when someone searches “Oregon nature photography”.

Sitemap – a page on a website that displays the site structure to visitors. Usually refered to as sitemap, with a lower case s.  Also an XML file that helps search engines crawl your webpage.  Usually refered to as Sitemap, with an upper case s.

Spider – See “Crawler”

Traffic – flow of visitor to your website.  You can think of this like road traffic.  A quiet country road is like low website traffic as opposed to a high traffic site which is like rush hour.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator.  Best known for address of web pages.  Example: http://www.simpleaspen.com

XML – Extensible Markup Language.  Another web language that looks similar to HTML.