| Delisting | When pages are removed from a search engines index. This may happen because they have been banned or for other reasons, such as an accidental glitch on the search engine's part. Source: Adventive |
| Directories | A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words and placed in a particular category. |
| Doorway Page | A page that is optimized to rank well for a given keyphrase. Also known as a Hall Way or Tunnel Page. A web page created expressly in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine's non-paid listings and which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often see only some enticement on the doorway page leading them to other pages (i.e., "Click Here To Enter), or they may be automatically propelled quickly past the doorway page. With cloaking, they may never see the doorway page at all. Several search engines have guidelines against doorway pages, though they are more commonly allowed in through paid inclusion programs. Also referred to as bridge pages, gateway pages and jump pages, among other names. |
| Description | A short piece of descriptive text to describe a web page or website. With most search engines, they gain this information primarily from the meta data element of a web page. Directories approve or edit the description based on the submission that is made for a particular URL. |
| Directory | An index of websites based mainly on human editing and categorization. In most cases the content is submitted to the directory, the editorial team will then approve a title and description and place the URL in an appropriate category. For example, Yahoo! is a human edited directory. A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages and returning lists of pages which match particular queries. Directories (also known as Indexes) are normally compiled manually, by user submission (such as at whatsnew.com), and often involve an editorial selection and/or categorization process (such as at LookSmart and Yahoo). |
| Directory Optimization | The process of creating a submission that is designed to increase the ranking according to relevant search terms. This process is especially important for paid submissions as an optimised submission greatly enhances the chances of receiving a good ROI. |
| DHTML | Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language |
| DNS | Domain Name System –Translates domain names to IP addresses. When a domain name is delegated to a name server, the domain name system ensures the name can be translated to the IP address of the web server. |
| Domain |
A domain is the main subdivision of internet addresses, the last three letters after the final dot, and it tells you what kind of organization you are dealing with. There are six top-level domains widely used: .com (commercial) .edu (educational),.net (network operations), .gov ( US government), .mil (US military) and .org (organization). Other, two letter domains represent countries; thus;.uk for the United Kingdom, .dk for Denmark, .fr for France, .de for Germany, .es for Spain, .it for Italy and so on. Online: Lazworld.com Domain Name Center A sub-set of internet addresses. Domains are hierarchical, and lower-level domains often refer to particular web sites within a top-level domain. The most significant part of the address comes at the end - typical top-level domains are .com, .edu, .gov, .org (which sub-divide addresses into areas of use). There are also various geographic top-level domains (e.g. .ar, .ca, .fr, .ro etc.) referring to particular countries. The relevance to search engine terminology is that web sites which have their own domain name (e.g. http://www.nativetongues.com) will often achieve better positioning than web sites which exist as a sub-directory of another organisation's domain (e.g. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tijana/). |
Dead Link |
An internet link which doesn't lead to a page or site, probably because the server is down or the page has moved or no longer exists. Most search engines have techniques for removing such pages from their listings automatically, but as the internet continues to increase in size, it becomes more and more difficult for a search engine to check all the pages in the index regularly. Reporting of dead links helps to keep the indexes clean and accurate, and this can usually be done by submitting the dead link to the search engine. |
De-listing |
The removal of pages from a search engine's index. Removal can occur for various reasons, including unreliability of the machine that hosts a site or because of perceived attempts at spamdexing. |
| Description | Descriptive text associated with a web page and displayed, usually with the page title and URL, when the page appears in a list of pages generated by a search engine or directory as a result of a query. Some search engines take this description from the DESCRIPTION Meta tag - others generate their own from the text in the page. Directories often use text provided at registration. |
| Direct Hit | A system which monitors the search engine users' selections from search engine results, counting which results are clicked on most, and how long visitors spend at that site, so as to improve relevancy. Used by HotBot and as a plug-in to Apple's new innovative Sherlock search system. See www.directhit.com. |
Dogpile |
A meta search engine. Found at http://www.dogpile.com. |
| Dynamic content | Information on web pages which changes or is changed automatically, e.g. based on database content or user information. Sometimes it's possible to spot that this technique is being used, e.g. if the URL ends with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml. It is possible to serve dynamic content using standard (normally static) .htm or .html type pages, though. Search engines will currently index dynamic content in a similar fashion to static content, although they will not usually index URLs which contain the ? character. |
| Dynamic Rotation | Advertisements rotate on a timed basis. |
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