Are you a webmaster or site owner confused with jargons used in webmaster’s community? Are you looking for a webmaster glossary explaining terms in simple English? If yes, then you are landed on a perfect place!!!
There are many terms used in a word of site building and it is difficult for a beginner to understand all of them. Here we compiled a complete list of glossary terms used by webmasters and site owners and also classified the terms into few categories for AdSense, WordPress, etc. so that you can filter the related terms easily. It is a good idea for a beginner to start with the glossary and this is the best place to learn and familiarize with the webmaster’s lingo.
If you see a term is not listed in this glossary then please contact us so that we can add it for the benefit of all webmasters.
| Terms Used | Description |
|---|---|
| 301 Redirect | 301 is the HTTP status code returned by a web server when the requested URL by the client is reached by redirecting the user agent. The user agent is normally a web browser or a search engine crawler trying to access a web page. 301 status code is not shown in the browser window and the user agent is automatically redirected to another resource by the server. Hence, it is generally called server side 301 redirect setup. |
| A/B Testing | Testing of two different versions to choose the best performing one. A/B testing can be done on different things like advertisements, landing pages, keywords, etc. |
| Above the Fold | The portion of the webpage a user can see without scrolling down. Above the fold area is of most importance as advertisers tend to pay more for the ads placed on above the fold area. |
| Ad Blocking | Most of the advertisements like Google AdSense work based on JavaScript code. Ad blocking is the way to identify the ad script on a page and stop loading it to give better user experience. |
| Ad Space | Ad space is the real estate available on a webpage for the purpose of displaying advertisements. |
| Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate marketing is a way to promote someone else product on your webpage. When there is a purchase done through your affiliate links, the product owner will pay a commission for generating the sale. |
| Alexa | Alexa is a web analytics company owned by Amazon founded during April 1996. Besides search engine optimization services, the website ranking service offered by Alexa is more popular among webmasters. High Alexa rank is an indication of the site getting more traffic in that particular country. |
| Alt Text | Alt text is the short form of alternative text. It is a HTML attribute used to provide text equivalent for non-textual elements. As search engines can't understand images and other non-textual elements, they use alt text for that purpose. Hence, alt text is an important factor in optimizing your site for search engine crawlers. |
| Analytics | Analytics is a way of understanding the behavioral pattern of how a webpage is getting traffic. The data includes the geographical origin of traffic, landing page, exit page, etc. This helps webmasters to analyze the site's performance and take corrective actions to improve the traffic. |
| Apache | Apache is an open source web server software popularly used on the platforms like WordPress. |
| Avatar | Avatar is a profile picture linked to the email id of an user. It is generally referred as Gravatar and used in comments and forums to show the real face of the users. |
| Backlink | Backlinks are the simple links directing to your website from other sites. Some webmaster refers these as an inbound links. It is very important to build backlinks as it not only indicates the popularity of the site but also for SEO purpose. |
| Backlinks | Backlinks are the incoming links pointing to your webpage. It is of utmost important for SEO as search engines give more weightage to the page having quality backlink when calculating search results. |
| Baidu | Baidu is a leading search engine in China with more than 75% of market share. You can submit your site to Baidu through Baidu Webmaster Tools. Other than Site and Sitemap submission Baidu offers wide range of various free features for registered users. |
| Bandwidth | The amount of information that can be sent through a server connection during particular period of time. |
| Bid | Bid is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on his advertisement. |
| Bot | Bot or robot is a piece of software that is used to crawl the web and find information. There are good as well as bad bots. Search engines are good bots that crawl and index the webpages for serving it on the search results. Bad bots generally try to steal confidential and financial information from a website for misuse. |
| Bounce Rate | Bounce rate is a percentage of users enter and exit on single page without viewing any other pages on a site. |
| Breadcrumbs | Breadcrumb is a collection of links helps the users to navigate easily in the website. This helps the user to know at any point of time where exactly he is in the site and move to the up or down level structure directly. Breadcrumbs can be a vertical or horizontal depending on the site's navigation structure. |
| Crawler | Crawler or Spider is a piece of script used to collect the information of all the web pages available in the web. Search engine providers give them a name for the ease of understanding like Googlebot or Bingbot. The important part is that you as an owner of your site need to tell these crawlers what are the URL links to be indexed and what are the referring links from your site are to be considered by the search engine. AdSense crawler is different than the web crawler used by Google for search engine indexing. |
| FTP | FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is a mechanism of connecting to a web server remotely from your location. This is a popular way of uploading and downloading files to server when using platforms like WordPress. |
| HTML Sitemap | XML Sitemap is file explaining the navigation structure of your site to the search engine crawlers. This helps the crawlers to understand the structure of your site easily and index it in the database. XML Sitemap of a website can be seen in the browser using the URL - http://www.Yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml and this Sitemap is not displayed for the visitors in the site structure. |
| HTTP | HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol which is a basis of data communication in the internet. The data communication starts with a request sent from a client and ends with the response received from a web server. |
| Lightbox | Lightbox is a pop-up window shows the original size of an image or a video when clicked on it. Disabling the lightbox of an image means that the users will not be able to click on the image to see the original size image in a pop-up window. Lightbox option can't be used when linking the image to any other resource. |
| Redirect | Redirect is a technique to route search engine crawlers and hence the visitors to a destination webpage when a requested source webpage is not available. |
| Resolving Host | Resolving host is the process of getting the IP address for the host name (site URL) you entered in the browser through the DNS servers. Whenever a site address is entered, the browser tries to get the IP address of the site through the DNS servers configured in the browser's setting. The default setting is to obtain the DNS servers from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or you can enter your own public DNS servers. |
| Robots.txt | A "robots.txt" is a text file in the root directory of every website which informs the search engines whether the webpage is allowed to be crawled or not. User-agent in the file indicates what kind of search engine you want to block. Robots.txt file of a website can be seen in the web browser as http://www.Yoursitename.com/robots.txt and the file is not displayed to the users in the site's navigation menu. |
| SEO | SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the art of building a search engine friendly site in order to get top rank to drive organic traffic to a website. |
| Sitelink or Deep link | Sitelink or Deep link is the structure displayed in the search engines along with the sectional information. Google refers it as a Sitelink and Bing refers it as a Deep links. As of now search engines automatically shows the structured information in the search results and webmasters have no specific way to inform the search engines about the structure to be displayed in the searches. The picture shown beside is an example of Sitelinks displayed in Google search results for the keyword "Bing". |
| Webmaster | Webmaster is a umbrella term used to identify anyone who create, maintain or design a website for his/her own purposes or for others. "Site Owner" is the interchangeable term to refer a webmaster. |
| Webmaster Tools | Webmaster Tools is the package of features offered by search engine companies to help webmasters build their site search engine friendly. Features are generally free and includes site submission, Sitemap submission, monitoring crawling errors, search queries, etc. |
| XML Sitemap | XML Sitemap is file explaining the navigation structure of your site to the search engine crawlers. This helps the crawlers to understand the structure of your site easily and index it in the database. XML Sitemap of a website can be seen in the browser using the URL - http://www.Yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml and this Sitemap is not displayed for the visitors in the site structure. The picture shown beside is an example of XML Sitemap and click here to see the XML Sitemap of this website. |
| Yandex | Yandex is a leading search engine in Russia having more than 60% of market share. Yandex Webmaster Tool allows you to submit your site to Yandex Search Engine. Unlike Baidu in China, Yandex provides the Webmaster Tools in both English and Russian language which makes it easier for Webmasters to submit and monitor their sites. |
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