Internet Marketing Terms

INDEX

A

A/B Testing - In A/B testing, you unleash two different versions of a keyword, advertisement, website, web/landing page, banner design or variable and see which performs the best. You test version A vs. version B to see how different versions perform.

About.com
Formerly known as The Mining Company , About is a guide based information portal.
Online: About.com

Above the fold
With reference to the top part of a newspaper, the term is used in Internet marketing to describe the top part of the page that the user can see without scrolling down.

Account
A business or department that controls a marketing budget. Small companies might use a single account to manage campaigns; larger companies might require several accounts to represent different divisions.

Account Daily Spending Limit
Maximum amount you want to spend each day. You may be charged up to 10% above your Account Daily Spending Limit.

Ad Clicks
Number of times users click on an ad banner.

Ad Groups - A group of ads within a Campaign. A set of ads and related keywords within a campaign. The ads can be displayed to prospective customers searching for or viewing content related to your keywords and/or ads. You can apply a default ad group bid to all keywords in an ad group or set custom bids for individual keywords.

Ad Group Bid
The default bid you set to apply to keywords in an ad group. You can override the ad group bid for a keyword by setting a custom keyword bid.

Address
A unique identifier for a computer or site online, usually a URL for a web site or marked with an @ for an email address. Literally, it is how your computer finds a location on the information highway.

Ad Scheduling - In internet marketing, Ad Scheduling is the practice of scheduling the day into several parts, during each of which a different t advertising rule is applied based on advertising objective, budget, and competitors.

Advanced Match Type
An option within Yahoo Sponsored Search that specifies how search terms are matched to ads. Ads that use the advanced match type are displayed for a broader range of searches relevant to your keywords, titles, descriptions and/or web content. By default, all ads are set to the advanced match type.

Ad Views (Impressions)
Number of times an ad banner is downloaded and presumably seen by visitors. If the same ad appears on multiple pages simultaneously, this statistic may understate the number of ad impressions, due to browser caching. Corresponds to net impressions in traditional media. There is currently no way of knowing if an ad was actually loaded. Most servers record an ad as served even if it was not.

Advertising Network
an aggregator or broker of advertising inventory for many websites. Advertising networks are the sales representatives for the Web sites within the inventory.

Affiliate
A marketing partner that promotes your product or services under a pay-for-results agreement.

Algorithm
The process a search engine applies to web pages so it can accurately produce a list of results based on a search term. Search engines regularly change their algorithms to improve the quality of the search results. Hence search engine optimization tends to require constant research and monitoring.

Alta Vista
A popular search engine. One of the first search engines originally owned by Digital now owned by Yahoo.
Online: http://­www.­altavista.­com

Anchor
A word, phrase or graphic image, in hypertext, it is the object that is highlighted, underlined or "clickable" which links to another site.

Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the visible clickable text for a hyperlink. For example: < a href="http://­www.­lazworld.­com/" >This is the anchor text< /a >The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.

Analytics
A feature that allows you to understand a wide range of activity related to your website and your online marketing activities. Using analytics provides you with information to help optimize your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, as well as your other online marketing activities, to best meet your business goals.

Alexa
Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data.
Online: Alexa

Alexa Rank
A web toolbar service that provides webmasters with real-time Alexa site traffic data.
Online: Alexa Toolbar

AOL
American Online. Stands for "A(merica) O(n)L(ine)" America Online, Inc., based in Virginia, originally began as a closed network content provider; meaning only AOL subscribers had access to AOL content. Today, this popular service provider continues to offer their own content (available only to AOL subscribers) as well as e-mail and Internet access that can be parentally controlled.
Online: AOL.com

Apache - Apache is a free, open-source web server software system that is pervasive on UNIX, Linux, and similar operating system types. It is also available for Windows and other operating systems. Google Analytics' admin system is powered by a variant of Apache.
Online: Apache.org

API
Application Programming Interface

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Applet
An application program written in Java which allows viewing of simple animation on web pages.

ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency)
The U.S. Department of Defense agency that, in conjunction with leading universities, created ARPAnet, the precursor of the Internet.

Ask Jeeves
A meta search engine that allows natural english quires. You can ask a question as your search.
Online: Ask.com

ASP
Microsoft Active Server Pages. Also know as Application Service Provider.

ASPX
Microsoft Active Server Page Framework

Auditor
Third-party company that tracks, counts and verifies ad-banner requests or verifies a Web site's ad reporting system.

Avatar
A digital representation of a user in a virtual reality site.

Average Page Depth - The average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session.

Average Response Value - The average revenue value of each click, calculated as total revenue divided by total clicks.

B

B2B
Business to Business

B2C
Business to Consumer

B2E
Business to Employee

BMP
Bitmap (file.bmp)

BTF
Below the Fold

Backbone
A high-speed line or series of connections that forms a large pathway within a network. The term is relative to the size of network it is serving. A Backbone in a small network would probably be much smaller than many non-Backbone lines in a large network.

Bandwidth
How much information (text, images, video, sound) can be sent through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move approximately 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video requires about 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.

Backlinks
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization (SEO) because some search engines, give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks. Sites with better backlink counts usually rank better in SERPs

Banner
Banners are the 468-by-60 pixels ad space on commercial Web sites that are usually "hot-linked" to the advertiser's site.

Beta
This term has migrated from computer and software development, and it is usually used as "beta site." It means test site or test version. Beta is not the finally version of a product or web site, but it's close enough to show in public and work the bugs out.

Bid
The maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click.

Bid Adjustments
A percentage or a fixed monetary amount by which to increase a bid for cases where traffic appears to be consistent with your selected targeting preferences. This is an optional feature that you can use to more competitively bid for certain targets.

Bid Limit
When campaign optimization is turned on, the bid limit defines the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click.

Black Hat SEO - Those who practice search engine optimization with unethical methods.

Blog - A blog is an online journal or "log" of any given subject. Blogs are easy to update, manage, and syndicate, powered by individuals and/or corporations and enable users to comment on postings.

Bookmark
A bookmark is an easy way to find your way Back to a web site -- just like a real bookmark helps you keep your place in a book you are reading.

Bot
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers

Bounce Rate - This shows a percentage of entrances on any given page that resulted in an exit from the page without entering any other page on the site.

Branding
A school of advertising that says, "If the consumer has heard of us, we've done our job." Fortunately for agencies, brand value is extremely difficult to measure, so branding campaigns can be easily defended with grandiose predictions of future glory.

Browser
An application used to view information from the Internet. Browsers provide a user-friendly interface for navigating through and accessing the vast amount of information on the Internet.

Browser Caching
To speed surfing, browsers store recently used pages on a user's disk. If a site is revisited, browsers display pages from the disk instead of requesting them from the server. As a result, servers under-count the number of times a page is viewed.

Browsing
A term that refers to exploring an online area, usually on the World Wide Web.

BBS (Bulletin Board System)
Software that enables users to log into email, usenet and chat groups via modem.

Buttons
Objects that, when clicked once, cause something to happen.

Bytes - A byte is a unit of information transferred over a network (or stored on a hard drive or in memory). Every web page, image, or other type of file is composed of some number of bytes. Large files, such as video clips, may be composed of millions of bytes ("megabytes").

C

Campaign
Defines the daily budget, language, geographic targeting, and location of where the ads are displayed.

Campaign Optimization
A feature that automatically manages campaigns for you to help maximize the effectiveness of your spending, based on guidelines you provide. Campaign optimization saves you time while helping you achieve your business objectives.

Canonical Tag - Code used by search engine crawlers/­spiders to tell search engines what URL is the original version of your webpage.

Cache
Cache is a storage area for frequently accessed information. Retrieval of the information is faster from the cache than the originating source. There are many types of cache including RAM cache, secondary cache, disk cache, and cache memory to name a few.

CD-ROM
Compact Disk-Read Only Memory, a storage medium popular in modern computers. One CD-ROM can hold 600 MB of data.

CFM
Cold Fusion Markup (file.cfm)

CGI
Common Gateway Interface. An interface-creation scripting program that allows Web pages to be made on the fly based on information from buttons, checkboxes, text input, etc.

CGI-BIN
Common Gateway Interface - Binary (/cgi-bin)

CGI Script - A CGI script is a program written in one of several popular languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, etc., that can take input from a web page, do something with the data, and produce a customized result (among many other possible uses). CGI scripts are widely used to add dynamic behavior to websites and to process forms.

Chat Room
An area online where you can chat with other members in real-time.

Click
The opportunity for a visitor to be transferred to a location by clicking on an ad, as recorded by the server.

Click-Through Rate
Percentage of times a user responded to an advertisement by clicking on the ad button/banner. At one time the granddaddy of Web-marketing measurements, click-through is based on the idea that online promotions that do what they're intended to do will elicit a click. CTR is one metric Internet marketers use to measure the performance of an ad campaign.

Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Code - Anything written in a language intended for computers to interpret.

Copyrighting
Copywriting for search engines is the art of creating web page copy that is tailored not only to fall in line with the current interpretation of search engine algorithms, but also to entice the reader to perform the action you desire. For example, to sign up for your newsletter, or click through to a certain area of your site.

Content Network
A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads.
Online: Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network.

Content Match
A pay-per-click campaign tactic that helps your ads display on sites throughout the Yahoo! distribution network. With Content Match, a number of variables can be used to determine your ad’s placement, including the content of your ad title, description and landing page, as well as user information, and other relevant data.

Contextual Advertising
Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.

Competiting Pages - The number of pages found for a competiting keyword.

Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of your clicks that generate sales or leads.. This number is given by dividing the number of sale/leads by the number of clicks you send to the offer. For example, if 100 clicks generated 100 visitors to your site, and they generate 5 sales/leads then your conversion rate would be 20%

Cookie
A file on your computer that records information such as where you have been on the World Wide Web. The browser stores this information which allows a site to remember the browser in future transactions or requests. Since the Web's protocol has no way to remember requests, cookies read and record a users browser type and IP address, and store this information on the users own computer. The cookie can be read only by a server in the domain that stored it. Visitors can accept or deny cookies, by changing a setting in their browser preferences.

Content (A/B) Testing - Testing the relative effectiveness of multiple versions of the same advertisement, or other content, in referring visitors to a site. Multiple versions of content can be uniquely identified by using a utm_content variable in the URL tag.

CPA
Cost Per Action. A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.

CPC
Cost Per Click. Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

CPC Campaign
A website marketing campaign based on a cost-per-click price where you only pay for the visitors that click on your listings. Hitwise Search Marketing provides guaranteed traffic at competitive cost per click prices. Due to our relationships with search engines combined with our optimization techniques, the price of marketing your website is lowered drastically.

CPL
Cost Per Lead

CPM
CPM is the cost per thousand for a particular site. An advertiser that charges every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.

CPS
Cost Per Sale

CPT
Cost Per Transaction

CPTM
Cost per targeted thousand impressions.

CRM
Customer Relationship Management

CSS
Cascading Style Sheet (file.css)

CTA
Abbreviation for Content Targeted Advertising. It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

CTR
Click Through Rate

Coverage
The percentage of a population group covered by the Internet.

Crawl - An automated, computerized algorithm hosted by search engines that browses the web. The programs create a copy of each webpage for future indexing by the search engines

Crawler
A program used by a search engine to "crawl" links on the Internet to find and index content. Also called a robot or spider. Can be used to identify and differentiate between types of crawlers indexing your site.

Creative
The technology used to create or develop an ad unit. The most common creative technology for banners is GIF or JPEG images. Other creative technologies include Java, - HTML, or streaming audio or video. These are commonly referred to as rich media banners.

Cyberspace
Coined by author William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer," cyberspace is now used to describe all of the information available through computer networks.

D

Default Page -The default page setting should be set to whatever the default (or index) page is in your site's directories. Usually, this will be 'index.html', but on Windows IIS servers, it is often 'Default.htm' or 'index.htm'. This information allows Google Analytics to reconcile log entries such as 'http://­www.­example.­com/' and 'http://­www.­example.­com/­index.­html', which are in fact the same page. Without the Default Page information entered correctly, these would be reported as two distinct pages. Only a single default page should be specified.

Delegation
The process of assigning name servers to a domain name.

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.

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 optimized submission greatly enhances the chances of receiving a good ROI.

DHTML
Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language

DML
Data Manipulation 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.

Doorway Page
A page that is optimized to rank well for a given keyword phrase Also known as a Hall Way or Tunnel Page.

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.

Duplicate Content - Refers to webpages with the same content across the same domain name and across different domain names.

Dynamic Rotation
Advertisements rotate on a timed basis.

E

Email
Electronic Mail, text files that are sent from one person to another.

Emotions
The online means of facial expressions and gestures. Examples: :) Tip your head to the left and you will see the two eyes and smiling mouth. Use them where applicable in chats and email. Other emotions include: :( sad :0 surprised o:) innocent.

EPC
Earnings Per Click. This number is given by dividing your revenue earned by the number of clicks you sent to the offer. For example, if you send an offer 100 clicks and earn $5.00 then your EPC would be $0.05

F

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
FAQ is a commonly used abbreviation for "Frequently Asked Questions." Most Internet sites will have a "FAQ" to explain what is in the area and how to use its features.

FFA
Free For All (FFA Links Page)

Firewall
A security barrier placed between an organization's internal computer network -- either its IS system or intranet -- and the Internet. It keeps your information in, and unwanted people out. It consists of one or more routers which accept, reject or edit transmitted information and requests.

Flame
An intentionally crude or abusive email message or usenet post. Rule: Don't do it. Ever. Not only is it bad etiquette, you leave a trail.

Flash
A vector based animation program that has become a popular technology used to deliver content. Currently search engines have difficulty indexing flash effectively as robots cannot read the text that is held within.

Forms
The pages in most browsers that accept information in text-entry fields. They can be customized to receive company sales data and orders, expense reports or other information. They can also be used to communicate.

Frames
The use of multiple, independent sections to create a single Web page. Each frame is built as a separate HTML file but with one "master' file to identify each section. When a user requests a page with frames, several pages will be displayed as panes. Sites using frames may report one page request with several panes as multiple page requests. Most audit firms count only the master HTML page request and therefore can accurately report the page requests.

Freeware
Shareware, or software, that can be downloaded off the Internet -- for free.

Frequency
The number of times an ad is delivered to the same browser in a single session or time period. A site needs to use cookies in order to manage ad frequency.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. A protocol that allows the transfer of files from one computer to another. FTP can also be used as a verb.

G

Gateway
A link from one computer system to a different computer system.

Geo Targeting
Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Googlebot
Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with "Googlebot"; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)
GIF (pronounced "gift") is a graphics format that can be displayed on almost all web browsers. It is a common compression format used for transferring graphics files between different computers. Most of the "pictures" you see online are GIF files. They display in 256 colors and have built-in compression. GIF images are the most common form of banner creative.

GIF89a or Animated GIF
A GIF animation tool that creates sequences of images to simulate animation and allows for transparent Background colors. Animated GIF's can generate higher response rates than static banners.

Goto.com
The original pay per click search engine that changed names and is now located at www.­overture.­com. Was acquired by Yahoo in 2003.
 

Googlebot - The name of the spider used by Google. Instructions to Googlebot can be directed in the robots.txt file. Googlebot statistics can be viewed with web analytics software, on web server logs, and in Google webmaster tools.

Google Dance - Some internet marketers reference "Google Dance" as the time just after the search engine results pages change because of a change in Google algorithms. Usually webmasters and marketers who lost top ranking and keyword placements were the ones who told the "Google Dance" story.

Google Webmaster Tools - A webmaster resource that will help you with the crawling and indexing of your website.
Online: Google Webmaster Central

Gross Exposures
Each time a Web server sends a file to a browser, it is recorded in the server log file as a "hit." Hits are generated for every element of a requested page (including graphics, text and interactive items). If a page containing two graphics is viewed by a user, three hits will be recorded - one for the page itself and one for each graphic. Webmasters use hits to measure their server's work load. Because page designs vary greatly, hits are a poor guide for traffic measurement.

H

HB
HotBot A popular search portal that is part of the Terra Lycos Network, but operates as a separate search engine in its own right.
Online: http://­www.­hotbot.­com

Hacker
Originally used to describe a computer enthusiast who pushed a system to its highest performance through clever programming.

Helper Application
This term refers to software programs that run along with browser programs enabling them to perform additional functions. Good examples are Shockwave for downloading and viewing moving images and Real Audio for hearing sounds and music online.

History List
Most browsers have a pull-down menu which displays the sites you've recently visited so you can return to site instantly or view your latest surfing session. The same mechanism makes it possible for servers to track where you were before visiting a particular site -- better viewing habit information than television networks ever dreamed of providing.

Hit
A hit is simply any request to the web server for any type of file. This can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, and many other file types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid popularity gauge, but rather is an indication of server use and loading.

Home Page
The page designated as the main point of entry of a Web site (or main page) or the starting point when a browser first connects to the Internet. Typically, it welcomes you and introduces the purpose of the site, or the organization sponsoring it, and then provides links to the lower-level pages of the site. In business terms, it's the grabber. If your home page downloads too slowly, or it's unclear or uninteresting, you will probably lose a customer.

Host
An Internet host used to be a single machine connected to the Internet (which meant it had a unique IP address). As a host, it made available to other machines on the network certain services. However, virtual hosting has now meant that one physical host can now be actually many virtual hosts.

Hotlists
These can be pull-down or pop-up menus on browsers that contain new or popular sites. Major browser and search engine home pages also contain updated hotlists, and there are entire sites -- such as Cool Site O' the Day.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language is a coding language used to make hypertext documents for use on the Web. HTML resembles old-fashioned typesetting code, where a block of text is surrounded by codes that indicate how it should appear. HTML allows text to be "linked" to another file on the Internet.

Hypertext
Any text that that can be chosen by a reader and which causes another document to be retrieved and displayed.

HTTP
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, the format of the World Wide Web. When a browser sees "HTTP" at the beginning of an address, it knows that it is viewing a WWW page.

HTTPS
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol Secure.

Hyperlink
This is the clickable link in text or graphics on a web page that takes you to another place on the same page, another page or a whole other site. It is the single most powerful and important function of online communications. Hyperlinks are revolutionizing the way the world gets its information.

I

ICANN
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global non-profit corporation formed to oversee a select range of Internet technical management functions currently managed by the U.S. Government, or by its contractors and volunteers.
Online: http://­www.­icann.­org

Index
The database of a search engine or directory.

IIS
Internet Information Services

IM
Instant Messaging

Impression (Ad Impression or Page Impression)
The ad impression is the metric a site uses for measuring inventory. Different definitions exist for this term: 1. The viewing of a page or ad(s) by the user. The assumption is that the page or ad images were successfully downloaded and the user viewed the page or ads on the page are recorded whether or not a user clicks on an ad. 2.The request for a page or ad. Agencies usually collect a fee for every thousand impressions (hence the term CPM Ð cost per thousand).

Inbound Link
An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links important because many search engine algorithms use the quality and quantity of inbound links to measure the popularity of a Web page.

Infopreneur
Someone who starts up a business in information technology or online communications.

Interactivity
If your web site isn't interactive, it's dead.

Internet
A collection of approximately 60,000 independent, inter-connected networks that use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from ARPANet of the late '60s and early '70s. The Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks providing reliable and redundant connectivity between disparate computers and systems by using common transport and data protocols.

Internet Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet entity.

Interstitial
Means "something in between" and is a page that is inserted in the normal flow of content between a user and a site. An Interstitial Ad is an "intrusive" ad unit that is spontaneously delivered without specifically being requested by a user. Blocking the site behind it, Interstitial Ads are designed to grab consumers' attention for the few nanoseconds it takes them to close the window. Interstitial's can be full pages or small daughter windows. Also referred to as "pop-ups."

Intranet
Intranets are private networks, usually maintained by corporations for internal communications, which use Internet -- usually web -- protocols, software and servers. They are relatively cheap, fast, and reliable networking and information warehouse systems that link offices around the world. They make it is easy for corporate users to communicate with one another, and to access the information resources of the Internet.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
A facility that allows people -- from many different places in the world at one time -- to chat in real time. The chats, or forums, are typed remarks, and they can be either public or private. This, understandably, is a wildly popular consumer area of the Internet. A sort of "ham radio" for the '90s, it offers intimacy combined with autonomy. Many celebrities are also talking to the public at pre-announced times, so IRC has commercial publicity uses, too. Business meetings can be conducted in the same way.

Inventory
The number of ads available for sale on a Web site. Ad inventory is determined by the number of ads on a page, the number of pages containing ad space and the number of page requests.

Invisible Web
A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn't indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

IP address
Internet Protocol address. Every system connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, which consists of a number in the format A.B.C.D where each of the four sections is a decimal number from 0 to 255. Most people use Domain Names instead and the resolution between Domain Names and IP addresses is handled by the network and the Domain Name Servers. With virtual hosting, a single machine can act like multiple machines (with multiple domain names and IP addresses).

IP Delivery
To deliver content based on the IP address of the computer requesting the URL. Sometimes used to tailor content to different user groups.

ISDN (Integrated Digital Services Network)
ISDN lines are high-speed dial-up connections to the Internet. That's good. What's bad is that their cost and availability is determined by local telephone companies, which means in some places they are available, in other places not; and sometimes they're cheap, and at other times wildly expensive. It is a lot of commotion for a connection roughly four times faster -- 128,000 bits per second -- than a normal phone line. (The joke among communications experts is that ISDN stands for "It Still Does Nothing.") Wait for fiber optic lines which will be thousands of times faster -- that's the future.

ISP (Internet Service Provider)
A business that provides access to the Internet. Its services are available to either individuals or companies, and include a dial-in interface with the Internet, software supply and often web site and intranet design. There are currently over 3,000 ISPs in the U.S. alone. It's a growth business, and as a result pricing is highly competitive, so shop around.

J

Java
Java is an object oriented programming language created by Sun Microsystems that supports enhanced features such as animation, or real-time updating of information. If you are using a web browser that supports Java, an applet (Java program) embedded in the Web page will automatically run.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG (pronounced "jay peg") is a graphics format newer than GIF which displays photographs and graphic images with millions of colors, it also compresses well and is easy to download. Unfortunately, not many browsers currently support it, so don't use it for your logo.

JS
Java Script

JSP
Java Server Pages (file.jsp)

K

Keyword
A word -- or often phrase -- used to focus an online search. A keyword is a database index entry that identifies a specific record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the