R

Ranking -

This refers to the process by which search engines display websites so that the most relevant websites appear on the top. Search engine optimisation is a technique by which high rankings are obtained.

Reciprocal Linking -

The practice of trading links between websites.

Redirect -

Where the Internet user is automatically taken to another web page address without him/her clicking on anything. Redirects are generally not good for search engine rankings, as they dilute Page Rank. There is also the risk that the search engine spider will not follow your redirect.

Referrer -

The referrer is the URL of the web page that a user was at before reaching yours. The server's logs capture referral URLs and store them in their log files. Furthermore, if a user used a search engine to find your website, the key phrases they used to find your site will be embedded in the referring URL. Intelligent log analyzers can then take this data to track how many visitors originate from each key phrase.

Relevance -

The likelihood that a given web page will be of interest or useful to a search engine user for a keyword search.

Robot (also Crawler) -

This is an automated program sent out by search engines that roams the Web with the intention of cataloguing/indexing all the sites it visits in the search engines database.

Robots.txt -

This is a text file that is used to control spiders that visit your website. Only spiders that conform to the Robots exclusion standard will obey the contents of the robots.txt file. This file allows you to grant exclusive access to certain folders, file types, and specific files depending on the robot accessing the site. This file is not necessary for your site. For more information, visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html.