Glossary
I & J
IDF
Inverse Document Frequency is a term used to help determine the position of a term in a vector space model.
IDF = log ( total documents in database / documents containing the term )
Inbound Link
Link pointing to one website from another website.
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link:
function. For example, using link:www.seobook.com would show pages linking to the homepage of this site
(both internal links and inbound links). Due to canonical URL issues www.site.com and site.com may show
different linkage data. Google typically shows a much smaller sample of linkage data than competing engines
do, but Google still knows of and counts many of the links that do not show up when you use their link: function.
Index
Collection of data used as bank to search through to find a match to a user fed query. The larger search
engines have billions of documents in their catalogs.
When search engines search they search via reverse indexes by words and return results based on matching
relevancy vectors. Stemming and semantic analysis allow search engines to return near matches. Index may
also refer to the root of a folder on a web server.
Internal Link
Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.
It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your
website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other
pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help
further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.
Information Architecture
Designing, categorizing, organizing, and structuring content in a useful and meaningful way.
Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website. Information
architecture suggestions:
focus each page on a specific topic
use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions which describe the content of the page
use clean (few or no variables) descriptive file names and folder names
use headings to help break up text and semantically structure a document
use breadcrumb navigation to show page relationships
use descriptive link anchor text
link to related information from within the content area of your web pages
improve conversion rates by making it easy for people to take desired actions
avoid feeding search engines duplicate or near-duplicate content
Information Retrieval
The field of science based on sorting or searching through large data sets to find relevant information.
Inktomi
Search engine which pioneered the paid inclusion business model. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! at the end of
2002.
Internal Navigation (see Navigation)
Internet
Vast worldwide network of computers connected via TCP/IP.
Internet Explorer
Microsoft's web browser. After they beat out Netscape's browser on the marketshare front they failed to
innovate on any level for about 5 years, until Firefox forced them to.
See also:
Download IE
Inverted File (see Reverse Index)
Invisible Web
Portions of the web which are not easily accessible to crawlers due to search technology limitations, copyright
issues, or information architecture issues.
IP Address
Internet Protocol Address. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some websites and
servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.
Many SEOs refer to unique C class IP addresses. Every site is hosted on a numerical address like aa.bb.cc.dd.
In some cases many sites are hosted on the same IP address. It is believed by many SEOs that if links come
from different IP ranges with a different number somewhere in the aa.bb.cc part then the link may count more
than links from the same local range and host.
IP delivery (see cloaking)
ISP
Internet Service Providers sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to
web analytics companies.
Italics (see emphasis)
J
JavaScript
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.
Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other
technologies to make web pages even more interactive.
K
I & J
IDF
Inverse Document Frequency is a term used to help determine the position of a term in a vector space model.
IDF = log ( total documents in database / documents containing the term )
Inbound Link
Link pointing to one website from another website.
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link:
function. For example, using link:www.seobook.com would show pages linking to the homepage of this site
(both internal links and inbound links). Due to canonical URL issues www.site.com and site.com may show
different linkage data. Google typically shows a much smaller sample of linkage data than competing engines
do, but Google still knows of and counts many of the links that do not show up when you use their link: function.
Index
Collection of data used as bank to search through to find a match to a user fed query. The larger search
engines have billions of documents in their catalogs.
When search engines search they search via reverse indexes by words and return results based on matching
relevancy vectors. Stemming and semantic analysis allow search engines to return near matches. Index may
also refer to the root of a folder on a web server.
Internal Link
Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.
It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your
website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other
pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help
further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.
Information Architecture
Designing, categorizing, organizing, and structuring content in a useful and meaningful way.
Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website. Information
architecture suggestions:
focus each page on a specific topic
use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions which describe the content of the page
use clean (few or no variables) descriptive file names and folder names
use headings to help break up text and semantically structure a document
use breadcrumb navigation to show page relationships
use descriptive link anchor text
link to related information from within the content area of your web pages
improve conversion rates by making it easy for people to take desired actions
avoid feeding search engines duplicate or near-duplicate content
Information Retrieval
The field of science based on sorting or searching through large data sets to find relevant information.
Inktomi
Search engine which pioneered the paid inclusion business model. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! at the end of
2002.
Internal Navigation (see Navigation)
Internet
Vast worldwide network of computers connected via TCP/IP.
Internet Explorer
Microsoft's web browser. After they beat out Netscape's browser on the marketshare front they failed to
innovate on any level for about 5 years, until Firefox forced them to.
See also:
Download IE
Inverted File (see Reverse Index)
Invisible Web
Portions of the web which are not easily accessible to crawlers due to search technology limitations, copyright
issues, or information architecture issues.
IP Address
Internet Protocol Address. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some websites and
servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.
Many SEOs refer to unique C class IP addresses. Every site is hosted on a numerical address like aa.bb.cc.dd.
In some cases many sites are hosted on the same IP address. It is believed by many SEOs that if links come
from different IP ranges with a different number somewhere in the aa.bb.cc part then the link may count more
than links from the same local range and host.
IP delivery (see cloaking)
ISP
Internet Service Providers sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to
web analytics companies.
Italics (see emphasis)
J
JavaScript
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.
Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other
technologies to make web pages even more interactive.
K
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