Optimize My Web Site Dictionary

Page, Larry - Co-founder of Google.

Page Title - See Title

Page Views - Each time a web page on a site is accessed by a visitor, it counts as one page view. It doesn't matter if the same user viewed the same page 5 minutes ago, it still represents another page view.

For example, let's say that a website receives two unique visitors in one day. The first visitor surfs around the site and views a total of six pages. The second visitor views 11 pages. This represents 17 page views for the day by two unique visitors. (This poor webmaster needs to do some serious SEO and site promotion!)

PageRank (PR) - A proprietary numerical score that is assigned by Google to every web page in their index. PR for each page is calculated by Google using a special mathematical algorithm, based on the number and quality (as determined by Google) of the inbound links to the page.

PageRank (PR) For Money - Selling or buying a link from a web page with a high Google PageRank for the stated purpose of increasing the other page's PR. This is highly frowned upon by Google and will result in a penalty for both pages if Google finds out about it.

Paid Inclusion - Some directories will only consider placing your URL into their database if you pay them a fee.

Yahoo charges a $299 per year evaluation fee for commercial sites. Note that this fee doesn't guarantee that your URL will be accepted and placed in the Yahoo database, but rather that Yahoo will consider your site for inclusion in a timely manner. If your site is rejected, you're just out your $299. But you do have an opportunity to appeal the decision.

Other smaller directories will guarantee to list your site upon payment of their fee, provided that your site meets their guidelines (these are clearly explained ahead of time).

Many search engines also have a paid inclusion program, including Inktomi and Alta Vista. You don't have to pay to be included in search engines however. If you have a few quality inbound links to your site, the search engines will find and index your site on their own eventually.

The advantage of utilizing their paid inclusion services is they'll usually crawl and index your site within 48 hours or less instead of the weeks or even months that it often takes otherwise.

Paid Link - See also: Text Link Ads

Pay for Performance - Payment structure where affiliated sales workers are paid commission for getting consumers to perform certain actions.

Publishers publishing contextual ads are typically paid per ad click. Affiliate marketing programs pay affiliates for conversions - leads, downloads, or sales.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engines - This is a traffic generating method where a search engine or directory places your link in their searchable database and charges you a fee every time your URL comes up in a search and it gets clicked on. The amount of the fee that you pay is usually determined by bidding on keywords or keyphrases.

The two largest PPC search engines are Overture and Google AdWords. There are also numerous smaller PPC engines on the net, some very good at delivering affordable targeted traffic, others not.

PDF (Portable Document Format) - is a universal file format developed by Adobe Systems that allows files to be stored and viewed in the original printer friendly context.

Penalty - A punishment levied against a web page by a search engine as a result of using an SEO tactic that it doesn't approve of. Tactics that most often result in penalties include using hidden text, sneaky redirects, and linking to a bad neighborhood.

A penalty usually results in a web page being credited for a lower Google PageRank (PR) than it has actually earned. Penalties also result in a page being buried deep within the SERPS where it will almost never be found again by searchers.

Personalization - Altering the search results based on a person's location, search history, content they recently viewed, or other factors relevant to them on a personal level.

PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) - is an open source server side scripting language used to render web pages or add interactivity to them. See also: PHP.net

Poison Word - Words which were traditionally associated with low quality content that caused search engines to want to demote the rankings of a page. See also: What Are Poison Words? Do They Matter?

Portal - Web site offering common consumer services such as news, email, other content, and search.

PPC (Pay Per Click) - is a pricing model which most search ads and many contextual ad programs are sold through. PPC ads only charge advertisers if a potential customer clicks on an ad.

See also:

Precision - The ability of a search engine to list results that satisfy the query, usually measured in percentage. (if 20 of the 50 results match the query the precision is 40%)

Search spam and the complexity of language challenge the precision of search engines.

Profit Elasticity - A measure of the profit potential of different economic conditions based on adjusting price, supply, or other variables to create a different profit potential where the supply and demand curves cross.

Proximity - A measure of how close words are to one another.

A page which has words near one another may be deemed to be more likely to satisfy a search query containing both terms. If keyword phrases are repeated an excessive number of times, and the proximity is close on all the occurrences of both words it may also be a sign of unnatural (and thus potentially low quality) content.