S

Search Engine -

A web site that offers its visitors the ability to search the content of numerous web pages on the Internet. Search engines periodically explore all the pages of a website and add the text on those pages into a large database that users can then search.

Search Engine Algorithm -

Mathematical formula used by search engines to rank web sites. Google became famous because of the quality of its algorithm - this enabled Google to provide highly relevant search results. A search algorithm is any search engines most valuable asset.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) -

Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) -

Strategies and tactics undertaken to improve web pages so they gain a higher ranking in the search engines.

Search Term -

A keyword or phrase used to conduct a search engine query

SEM -

Search Engine Marketing or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to promote the website.

SEO -

Search engine optimization

SEO Tutor -

A search engine optimisation expert who teaches others how to opitimise and/or position their websites in the search engines, e.g. SEO Training.

SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) -

When a user types in a keyword into a Search Engine, the resulting list of results is called the SERP.

Spamdexing -

Also known as "spamming". While spamming is generally used to refer to unsolicited bulk mail, spamming with respect to search engines refer to the process of manipulating search engines results in order to obtain higher rankings. Such techniques are not tolerated by search engines and if caught, will result in being banned from them.

Spamglish -

Keyword-rich gibberish used as search engine fodder instead of thoughtfully written, interesting content. Spamglish often includes meaningless sentences and keyword repetition in order to improve search engine rankings.

Spider -

Also known as a bot, robot, or crawler. Spiders are automated programs used by search engine to periodically explore your web site, download the HTML content (not including graphics) of your pages, strip out whatever it considers superfluous and redundant out of the HTML, and store the rest in a database (i.e. it's index).

Spider Trap -

An infinite loop, where a search engine spider get caught when it explores a dynamic site, where the URLs of pages keep changing. For example, a home page may have a different URL and the search engine may not be able to ascertain that it is the home page that it has already indexed but under another URL.

Splash page -

A home page for the most part devoid of content. Splash pages usually say something to the effect of "Enter Here" or "Choose our Flash-enabled site or the HTML version". Splash pages can also be damaging to search engine rankings.

Stemming -

Search engines such as Google use a process called stemming to deliver results based on a word's root spelling. An example would be similar search results returned for 'clothes' as for the word 'clothing'.

Stop Character -

Certain characters, such as ampersand (&), equals sign (=), and question mark (?), when in a web page's URL, tip off a search engine that the page in question is dynamic. Search engines are cautious of indexing dynamic pages for fear of spider traps, thus pages that contain stop characters in their URL run the risk of not getting indexed and becoming part of the "Invisible Web." Google won't crawl more than one dynamic level deep. So, dynamic pages with stop characters in its URL should get indexed if a static page links to it. Eliminating stop characters from all URLs on your site will go a long way in ensuring that your entire site gets indexed by Google.

Stop Words -

Certain words, such as "the," "a", "an," "of," and "with," are so common and meaningless that a search engine won't bother including them in their index, or database, of web page content. So in effect, the stop words on your web pages are ignored as if those words weren't on your pages in the first place. Including a lot of stop words in your title tag waters down the title tag's keyword density.

Streaming Media -

Audio-visual content that is played as it is being downloaded. Thus, an Internet user could begin watching a video clip as the footage downloads rather than having to wait for the clip to download in its entirety beforehand.

Submission -

Submitting a web page address to a search engine in the hope that it will index it. It is suspected that some search engines apply a penalty factor to pages that were submitted versus those that are found by the search engine spiders.

Supplement Pages -

Supplement pages are pages which are indexed by Google but do not exist at this time. But during searching for a particular search term they are shown in the search result pages.