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Glossary of Terms
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| Although we maintain the currency of our glossary, some of the terms and definitions presented below are subject to expiration or change due to the evolving nature of the industry. |
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AdjacencyA property of the relationship between words in a search engine (or directory) query. Search engines often allow users to specify that words should be next to one another or somewhere near one another in the Web pages searched.
Agent Name DeliveryThe process of sending search engine spiders to a tailored page, yet directing your visitors to what you want them to see. This is done using server side includes (or other dynamic content techniques). SSI, for example, can be used to deliver different content to the client depending on the value of HTTP_USER_AGENT. Most normal browser software packages have a user agent string which starts with "Mozilla" (coined from Mosaic and Godzilla). Most search engine spiders have specific agent names, such as "Gulliver", "Infoseek sidewinder", "Lycos spider" and "Scooter".
By switching on the value of HTTP_USER_AGENT (a process known as agent detection), different pages can be presented at the same URL, so that normal visitors will never see the page submitted to search engines (and vice versa).
In practice this is somewhat simplistic. Some search engines pretend to be "plain Mozilla" browsers to prevent use of agent name delivery. Effective use of agent name delivery can be very difficult, and may not even work.
How do you spot agent name delivery at work? This is quite difficult, as the owners of Web pages using agent name delivery can control what you see! You may be able to guess that a page is using this technique if it appears to be indexed incorrectly or the title or description don't match the page you see, but this could also have been achieved by switching pages after the relevant search engine has indexed it. If you really want to see the search engines' tailored version of a page, write a program (e.g. a Perl script) to retrieve the URL with HTTP_USER_AGENT set to each of the strings used by the search engine spiders. If agent name delivery is in use, one or more of the retrieved pages will be different to the others.
See also hidden text and Bait-and-Switch and IP delivery.
AltaVistaAltaVista is a popular search engine with one of the largest databases on the Web, indexing more than 140 million pages. Its main URL is http://www.altavista.com. Until 1998, this search engine provided the search facility for Yahoo. AltaVista indexes all the words in a Web page, and new pages are normally added to the database fairly quickly, within 72 hours. You are asked to submit just the main page of your site. The AltaVista spider will then explore your site and index a representative sample of the pages. Some problems with spamming have been noticed. The use of keyword Meta tags is penalized. AltaVista places various alternative options before its search results, including suggested questions (using the Ask Jives service), Real Names. Paid entries are beginning to appear at the start of the search results.
AOL NetFindThe default search engine for users of the AOL Internet service provider, and hence a busy site. Its URL is http://www.netfind.com. It is essentially the same engine as Excite.
AppletA small program, often written in Java, which usually runs in a Web browser, as part of a Web page. It is possible that the use of such a program may cause spiders and robots to stop indexing a page.
ArchitextSpiderThe name of the Excite search engine's spider.
Ask JeevesAn advanced Meta search engine that can be asked questions in English. This service is also in use at AltaVista. http://www.askjeeves.com.
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