Buzzwords Week 2

Black Box Algorithms

Black box is technical jargon for a when system is viewed primarily in terms of input and output characteristics. A black box algorithm is one where the user cannot see the inner workings of the algorithm. All search engine algorithms are hidden.

Brand and Branding

"A brand is a customer experience represented by a collection of images and ideas; often, it refers to a symbol such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary." (Added Definition) "A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality." Source: Wikipedia

403 Server Code

A "forbidden" message. Prevents access to a URL and displays the reason for preventing access.

302 Redirect

A "found" message. (Also referred to as a "temporary redirect.") This form of redirection is commonly used -- and in some cases abused -- when a URL has been moved to a different location; but, it will be returning to the original location eventually.

404 Server Code

A "not found" message. Server cannot find the URL requested.

Bid Boosting

A form of automated bid management that allows you to increase your bids when ads are served to someone whose age or gender matches your target market. This level of demographic focus and the "bid boosting" tool are current Microsoft adCenter offerings.

Blacklists

A list of Web sites that are considered off limits or dangerous. A Web site can be placed on a blacklist because it is a fraudulent operation or because it exploits browser vulnerabilities to send spyware and other unwanted software to the user.

Brand Lift

A measurable increase in consumer recall for a specific, branded company, product or service. For example, brand lift might show an increase in respondents who think of Dell for computers, or WalMart for "every household thing."

301 Redirect

A message that the URL has moved permanently. This is commonly used when a URL has a new location and will not be appearing again at the old URL.

Distribution Network

A network of web sites (content publishers, ISPs) or search engines and their partner sites on which paid ads can be distributed. The network receives advertisements from the host search engine, paid for with a CPC or CPM model. For example, Google's advertising network includes not only the Google search site, but also searchers at AOL, Netscape and the New York Post online edition, among others.

Contextual search Campaigns

A paid placement search campaign that takes a search ad listing beyond search engine results pages and onto the sites of matched content web partners.

Arbirage

A practice through which web publishers - second tier search engines, directories and vertical search engines - engage in the buying and reselling of web traffic. Typically, arbitrage occurs when such publishers pool client budgets to engage in PPC campaigns on Tier I search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN). If the publishers pay $0.10 per click for traffic, they typically resell those visitors to clients who bid $0.20 or more for the same keywords. Successful arbitrage requires that the arbitrageur must pay less per click than what the traffic sells for. The variation called Affiliate Arbitrage involves a web site owner or blogger bidding on keywords from programs such as Yahoo! Search Marketing or Google AdWords, who then links the ads, either to their own web site, or directly to a merchant site displaying ads (from programs such as the Yahoo! Publisher Network or Google AdSense).

Acquisition Strategy

A process of finding those potential customers who are in the market and ready to buy. The attempt to lead customers to a web site and to welcome them, answer their questions and close the sale.

Click Bot

A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the engines in order to artificially inflate click amounts.

Editorial Review Process

A review process for potential advertiser listings conducted by search engines, which check to ensure relevancy and compliance with the engine's editorial policy. This process could be automated - using a spider to crawl ads - or it could be human editorial ad review. Sometimes it's a combination of both. Not all PPC Search Engines review listings.

Contextual Search

A search that analyzes the page being viewed by a user and gives a list of related search results. Offered by Yahoo! and Google.

Algorithm

A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank listings in response to a query. Search engines guard their algorithms closely, as they are the unique formulas used to determine relevancy. Algorithms are sometimes referred to as the "secret sauce."

Blogs

A truncated form for "web log." A blog is a frequently updated journal that is intended for general public consumption. They usually represent the personality of the author or web site. A good source of blogging terms is at [http://www.whatis.techtarget.com] .

CPM or Cost per thousand

A unit of measure typically assigned to the cost of displaying an ad. If an ad appears on a web page 1,000 times and costs $5, then the CPM would be $5. In this instance, every 1,000 times an ad appeared, it would incur a charge of $5.

Feeds

A web document that is a shortened or updated (revised content only) version of a web page created for syndication. Usually served at user request, through subscription; also includes ad feeds to shopping engines and paid-inclusion ad models. Ad feeds are usually in Extensible Markup Language (XML) or Rich Site Summary (RSS) format.

Doorway Page

A web page specifically created in order to obtain rankings within the natural listings of a search engine. These pages generally are filled with keywords and are meant to funnel surfers into the main web site. This practice is generally considered an outdated spam tactic. This term is not to be confused with a "landing page."

A/B Testing

A/B testing, at its simplest, is randomly showing a visitor one version of a page - (A) version or (B) version - and tracking the changes in behavior based on which version they saw. (A) version is normally your existing design ("control" in statistics lingo); and (B) version is the "challenger" with one copy or design element changed. In a "50/50 A/B split test," you're flipping a coin to decide which version of a page to show. A classic example would be comparing conversions resulting from serving either version (A) or (B), where the versions display different headlines. A/B tests are commonly applied to clicked-on ad copy and landing page copy or designs to determine which version drives the more desired result. See also Multivariate Testing.

Absolute URL's Link

Absolute URLs use the full-path address, such as http://www.domain.com/page1.htm. (See also Relative URL's link.)

API

Acronym for Application Programming Interface. This is a program that advertisers create to manage their SEM campaigns, bypassing the search engines' interfaces.

CTR

Acronym for Click-Through Rate, the number of clicks that an ad gets, divided by the total number of times that ad is displayed or served. (Represented as: total clicks / total impressions for a specific ad = CTR). For example, if an ad has 100 impressions and 6 clicks, the CTR is 6%. The higher the CTR, the more visitors your site is receiving; CTR also factors into you advertiser search engine Quality Score and, therefore, your minimum keyword bids on Tier I engines.

CPA

Acronym for Cost Per Acquisition (sometimes called Cost Per Action), which is the total cost of an ad campaign divided by the number of conversions. For example, if a campaign cost $100 and resulted in 5 conversions, the CPA is $20 ($100 / 5). It cost $20 to generate one conversion.

CPC

Acronym for Cost Per Click, or the amount search engines charge advertisers for every click that sends a searcher to the advertiser's web site. For an advertiser, CPC is the total cost for each click-through received when its ad is clicked on.

CPO

Acronym for Cost Per Order. The dollar amount of advertising or marketing necessary to acquire an order. Calculated by dividing marketing expenses by the number of orders. Also referred to as CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).

CPM

Acronym for Cost Per Thousand Impressions (ad serves or potential viewers). Compare to CPC pricing (defined above). CPM is a standard monetization model for offline display ad space, as well as for some context-based networks serving online search ads to, for example, web publishers and sites.

COA

Acronym for Cost of Acquisition, which is how much it costs to acquire a conversion (desired action), such as a sale.

DMCA

Acronym for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which....criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM), and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. [Circumvention of controlled access includes unscrambling, copying, sharing, commercial recording or reverse engineering copyrighted entertainment or software.] It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet." Source: Wikipedia

DKI

Acronym for Dynamic Keyword Insertion, the insertion of the EXACT keywords a searcher included in his or her search request in the returned ad title or description. As an advertiser, you have bid on a table or cluster of these keyword variations, and DKI makes your ad listings more relevant to each searcher.

eCPM

Acronym for Effective Cost Per Thousand, a hybrid Cost-Per-Click (CPC) auction calculated by multiplying the CPC times the click-through rate (CTR), and multiplying that by one thousand. (Represented by: (CPC x CTR) x 1000 = eCPM.) This monetization model is used by Google to rank site-targeted CPM ads (in the Google content network) against keyword-targeted CPC ads (Google AdWords PPC) in their hybrid auction.

Ad

Advertisements a searcher sees after submitting a query in a search engine or web site search box. In PPC, these ads are usually text format, with a Title, Description and Display URL. In some cases, a keyword the searcher used in his or her query appears boldfaced in the displayed ad. Ads can be positioned anywhere on a search results page; commonly they appear at the top - above the natural or organic listings - and on the right side of the page, also known as "Right Rail."

Contextual advertising

Advertising that is automatically served or placed on a web page based on the page's content, keywords and phrases. Contrast to a SERP (search engine result page) ad display. For example, contextual ads for digital cameras would be shown on a page with an article about photography, not because the user entered "digital cameras" in a search box.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a process of revenue sharing that allows merchants to duplicate sales efforts by enlisting other web sites as a type of outside sales force. Successful affiliate marketing programs result in the merchant attracting additional buyers, and the affiliate earning the equivalent of a referral fee, based on click-through referrals to the merchant site.

Backlinks

All the links pointing at a particular web page. Also called inbound links. Source: Webmaster World Forums

Contextual network

Also called Content Ads and Content Network, contextual network ads are served on web site pages adjacent to content that contains the keywords being bid upon. Contextual ads are somewhat like traditional display ads placed in print media and, like traditional ad buys, are often purchased on the same CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model for purchased keywords, rather than a CPC basis

Content Network

Also called Contextual Networks, content networks include Google and Yahoo! Contextual Search networks that serve paid search ads triggered by keywords related to the page content a user is viewing.

Buying Funnel

Also called the Buying Cycle, Buyer Decision Cycle and Sales Cycle, Buying Funnel refers to a multi-step process of a consumer's path to purchase a product - from awareness to education to preferences and intent to final purchase.

Ban

Also known as Delisting. Refers to a punitive action imposed by a search engine in response to being spammed. Can be an IP address of a specific URL

Directory Search

Also known as a search directory. Refers to a directory of web sites contained in an engine that are categorized into topics. The main difference between a search directory and a search engine is in how the listings are obtained. A search directory relies on user input in order to categorize and include a web site. Additionally, a directory usually only includes higher-level pages of a domain.

ALT Text

Also known as alternative text or alt attribute. An HTML tag (ALT tag) used to provide images with a text description in the event images are turned off in a web browser. The images text description is usually visible while "hovering" over the image. This tag is also important for the web access of the visually impaired.

CPA or "Cost per Aquisition"

Also referred to as "Cost Per Action." This is a metric used to measure the total monetary cost of each sale, lead or action from start to finish.

Content Targeting

An ad serving process in Google and Yahoo! that displays keyword triggered ads related to the content or subject (context) of the web site a user is viewing. Contrast to search network serves, in which an ad is displayed when a user types a keyword into the search box of a search engine or one of its partner sites.

Cascading Style Sheets or CSS

An addition to your HTML, a web site's "cascading style sheet" contains information on paragraph layout, font sizes, colors, etc. A cascading style sheet has many uses as far as search engine optimization and web site design are concerned.

Bucket

An associative grouping for related concepts, keywords, behaviors and audience characteristics associated with your company's product or service. A "virtual container" of similar concepts used to develop PPC keywords, focus ad campaigns and target messages.

Competitive Analysis

As used in SEO, CA is the assessment and analysis of strengths and weaknesses of competing web sites, including identifying traffic patterns, major traffic sources, and keyword selection.

Crawler

Automated programs in search engines that gather web site listings by automatically crawling the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot) "reads" page text contents and web page coding, and also follows links to other hyperlinked pages on the web pages it crawls. A crawler makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index, or database.

Brand

Customer or user experience represented by images and ideas, often referring to a symbol (name, logo, symbols, fonts, colors), a slogan and a design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both from its use, and as influenced by advertising, design and media commentary. Brand is often developed to represent implicit values, ideas and even personality. Source: Wikipedia

Click Fraud

Clicks on a Pay-Per-Click advertisement that are motivated by something other than a search for the advertised product or service. Click fraud may be the result of malicious or negative competitor/affiliate actions motivated by the desire to increase costs for a competing advertiser or to garner click-through costs for the collaborating affiliate. Also affects search engine results by diluting the quality of clicks.

Client-side Tracking

Client-side tracking entails the process of tagging every page that requires tracking on the Web site with a block of JavaScript code. This method is cookie based (available as first or third party cookies) and is readily available to companies who do not own or manage their own servers.

e-commerce

Conducting commercial transactions on the internet where goods, information or services are bought and sold.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rates are measurements that determine how many of your prospects perform the prescribed or desired action step. If your prescribed response is for a visitor to sign up for a newsletter, and you had 100 visitors and 1 newsletter signup, then your conversion rate would be 1%. Typically, micro-conversions (for instance, reading different pages on your site) lead to your main conversion step (making a purchase, or signing up for a service).

Custom Feeds

Create custom feeds for each of the shopping engines that allow you to submit XML feeds. Each of the engines has different product categories and feed requirements.

Brand Mesaging

Creative messaging that presents and maintains a consistent corporate image across all media channels, including search.

Dynamic landing Pages

Dynamic landing pages are web pages to which click-through searchers are sent that generate changeable (not static) pages with content specifically relevant to the keyword search. For example, if a user is looking for trucks, then a dynamic landing page with information and pictures on multiple models and, possibly, geographically localized dealerships might be served. The term truck would trigger a data dump into a web site template for all possible vehicles, that serves all truck-related information.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative application for managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a web application and often it is used as a method of managing web sites and web content. The market for content management systems remains fragmented, with many open source and proprietary solutions available. Source: Wikipedia.org

Baseline Metrics

Time-lagged calculations (usually averages of one sort or another) which provide a basis for making comparisons of past performance to current performance. Baselines can also be forward-looking, such establishing a goal and seeking to determine whether the trends show the likelihood of meeting that goal. They become an essential piece of a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

Deep Linking

Linking that guides, directs and links a click-through searcher (or a search engine crawler) to a very specific and relevant product or category web page from search terms and PPC ads.

Bridge Page

Often used to describe the web pages that linked together many doorway pages on a web site. Also see: Doorway Page, Hallway Page.

Campaign Integration

Planning and executing a paid search campaign concurrently with other marketing initiatives, online or offline, or both. More than simply launching simultaneous campaigns, true paid search integration takes all marketing initiatives into consideration prior to launch, such as consistent messaging and image, driving offline conversions, supporting brand awareness, increasing response rates and contributing to ROI business goals.

Copyright

Protection and ownership of works or expressions fixed in a tangible form, including words, art, images, sounds, and music. Copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to copy, display, license, or expand the work. Copyrights cover virtually any original expression; and the protection arises under common law as soon as the original expression is created (fixed in tangible form). However, proving ownership of the original expression may be difficult legally, unless the work was displayed or used publicly at a verifiable point in time.

Domain

Refers to a specific web site address.

Entry Page

Refers to any page within a web site that a user employs to "enter" your web site. Also see Landing Page.

Consumer Generated Media (CGM)

Refers to posts made by consumers to support or oppose products, web sites, or companies, which are very powerful when it comes to company image. It can reach a large audience and, therefore, may change your business overnight.

Description Tag

Refers to the information contained in the description META tag. This tag is meant to hold the brief description of the web page it is included on. The information contained in this tag is generally the description displayed immediately after the main link on many search engine result pages.

Automatic Optimization

Search engines identify which ad for an individual advertiser demonstrates the highest CTR (click-through rate) as time progresses, and then optimizes the ad serve, showing that ad more often than other ads in the same Ad Group/Ad Order.

Buzz Monitoring Services

Services that will email a client regarding their status in an industry. Most buzz or publicity monitoring services will email anytime a company's name, executives, products, services or other keyword-based information on them are mentioned on the web. Some services charge a fee; others, such as Yahoo! and Google Alerts, are free.

Bid Management Software

Software that manages PPC campaigns automatically, called either rules-based (with triggering rules or conditions set by the advertiser) or intelligent software (enacting real-time adjustments based on tracked conversions and competitor actions). Both types of automatic bid management programs monitor and change bid prices, pause campaigns, manage budget maximums, adjust multiple keyword bids based on CTR, position ranking and more.

CPC or Cost per Click

Some search engines charge advertisers a cost for every click sent to their web site. The "CPC" is the total cost for each click received.

B2B

Stands for "Business to Business." A business that markets its services or products to other businesses.

B2C

Stands for "Business to Consumer." A business that markets its services or products to consumers.

F.T.P.

Stands for "File Transfer Protocol."

F.F.A.

Stands for "Free for All" link pages. These are not search engines or directories. They are, for the most part, pages that simply take URL submissions that usually stay active for a period of time. A submission is placed at the top of their list and then moved down, and eventually out, as other submissions are made. These are seen as outdated and were used in an attempt to artificially inflate link popularity.

FAQ

Stands for "Frequently Asked Questions."

AJAX

Stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Ajax is a programming language that allows for the updating of specific sections of content on a web page, without completely reloading the page.

DHTML

Stands for Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language.

Eye Tracking Studies

Studies by Google, Marketing Sherpa and Poynter Institute using Eyetools technology to track the eye movements of web page readers, in order to understand reading and click-through patterns.

Dayparting

The ability to specify different times of day - or day of week - for ad displays, as a way to target searchers more specifically. An option that limits serves of specified ads based on day and time factors.

Branding Strategy

The attempt to develop a strong brand reputation on the web to increase brand recognition and create a significant volume of impressions.

Conversion Action

The desired action you want a visitor to take on your site. Includes purchase, subscription to the company newsletter, request for follow-up or more information (lead generation), download of a company free offer (research results, a video or a tool), subscription to company updates and news.

Ad Title

The first line of text displayed in a clickable search or context-served ad. Ad Titles serve as ad headlines.

Ad Copy

The main text of a clickable search or context-served ad. It usually makes up the second and third lines of a displayed ad, between the Ad Title and the Display URL.

Contextual Distribution

The marketing decision to display search ads on certain publisher sites across the web instead of, or in addition to, placing PPC ads on search networks.

Bid

The maximum amount of money that an advertiser is willing to pay each time a searcher clicks on an ad. Bid prices can vary widely depending on competition from other advertisers and keyword popularity.

Auction Model Bidding

The most popular type of PPC bidding. First, an advertiser determines what maximum amount per click they are willing to spend for a keyword. If there is no competition for that keyword, the advertiser pays their bid, or less, for every click. If there is competition at auction for that keyword, then the advertiser with the highest bid will pay one penny more than their nearest competitor. For example, advertiser A is willing to bid up to $0.50; advertiser B is willing to bid up to $0.75. If advertiser A's actual bid is $0.23, then advertiser B will only pay $0.24 per click. Also referred to as market or competition-driven bidding.

Conversion Rate2

The number of visitors who convert (take a desired action at your site) after clicking through on your ad, divided by the total number of click-throughs to your site for that ad. (Expressed as: total click-throughs that convert / total click-throughs for that ad = conversion rate.) For example, if an ad brings in 150 click-throughs and 6 of the 150 clicks result in a desired conversion, then the conversion rate is 4% (6 / 150 = 0.04). Higher conversion rates generally translate into more successful PPC campaigns with a better ROI.

Click through Rate

The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example, imagine 10 people do a web search. In response, they see links to a variety of web pages. Three of the 10 people all choose one particular link. That link then has a 30 percent click-through rate. Also called CTR. Source: Webmaster World Forums

Brand Reputation

The position a company brand occupies.

Behavioral Targeting

The practice of targeting and serving ads to groups of people who exhibit similarities not only in their location, gender or age, but also in how they act and react in their online environment. Behaviors tracked and targeted include web site topic areas they frequently visit or subscribe to; subjects or content or shopping categories for which they have registered, profiled themselves or requested automatic updates and information, etc.

Cloaking

The process by which a web site can display different versions of a web page under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized or a content-rich page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most major search engine representatives have publicly stated that they do not approve of this practice.

Canonicilzation

The process of picking the best URL when there are several choices; this usually refers to home pages. Source: Matt Cutts Blog: SEO Advice. In addition, "Canonicalization is the process of converting data that has more than one possible representation into a "standard" canonical representation. This can be done to compare different representations for equivalence, to count the number of distinct data structures (e.g., in combinatorics), to improve the efficiency of various algorithms by eliminating repeated calculations, or to make it possible to impose a meaningful sorting order." Source: Wikipedia

Comment

The text contained within a "comment" tag in a web page. "Comments" are used in a variety of situations, such as communication between web developers and Cascading Style Sheets (See Above).

Display URL

The web page URL that one actually sees in a PPC text ad. Display URL usually appears as the last line in the ad; it may be a simplified path for the longer actual URL, which is not visible.

Dynamic text

This is text, a keyword or ad copy that customizes search ads returned to a searcher by using parameters to insert the desired text somewhere in the title or ad. When the search query (for example, "hybrid cars") matches the defined parameter (for example, all brands of electric/gasoline passenger cars AND SUVs), then the associated term (hybrid) is plugged into the ad. Dynamic insertion makes the ad mirror exact terms used in the search query, creating very relevant ads. See also DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion).

Buzz Opportunities

Topics popular in the media and with specific audiences that receive news coverage or pass along recommendations that help increase exposure for a brand. Ways to uncover potential buzz opportunities include reviewing incoming traffic to a web site from organic links and developing new keywords to reach those visitors, or scanning special interest blogs and social media sites to learn what new topics attract rising interest, also to develop new keywords and messages.

Creatives

Unique words, design and display of a paid-space advertisement. In paid search advertising, creative refers to the ad's title (headline), description (text offer) and display URL (clickable link to advertiser's web site landing page). Unique creative display includes word emphasis (boldfaced, italicized, in quotes), typeface style and, on some sites, added graphic images, logos, animation or video clips.

Click through

When a user clicks on a hypertext link and is taken to the destination of that link

Anchor Text

Words used to link to a page, known as anchor text are an important signal to search engines to determine a page's relevance.