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Frequently Asked Questions

CMF (1)
What are Content Management Frameworks?

A content management framework is an application programming interface for creating a customized content management system.

 

Content Management Framework (1)

A content management framework is an application programming interface.

What are Content Management Frameworks?

A content management framework is an application programming interface for creating a customized content management system.

 

Google (2)

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies.

What is Google?

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of December 31, 2008, the company has 20,222 full-time employees.

 

What is the maximum length for the page title in Google?

The maximum title length that Google will index and display in 66 characters including punctuation and spaces. If your page title length exceeds the maximum length, Google will cut off the title at the last full word.

Google Search (1)

The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service.

What is Google Search?

The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. As of August 2007, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 53.6% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (19.9%) and Live Search (12.9%). Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators, although at any given time it will only return a maximum of 1,000 results for any specific search query. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Google Product Search, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps, and more.

Matt Cutts (1)

Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues.

Who is Matt Cuts?

Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam. Cutts also advises the public on how to get better website visibility in Google and inequitably imposes, as some justifiably argue, the infamous "Google penalty" on select websites.

Cutts started his career in search when working on his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matt got his Bachelor's and Master's degree from the University of Kentucky. His field of study was computer graphics and movement tracking, then moved into the field of information retrieval, and search engines after taking two required outside classes from the university's Information and Library Science department. He did not complete the Ph.D. before moving to Google, but did acquire a masters degree.

Before working at the Search Quality group at Google, Cutts worked at the ads engineering group, and the SafeSearch capabilities. There he earned the nickname "porn cookie guy" by giving his wife's homemade cookies to any Googler who provided an example of unwanted pornography in the search results.

Cutts is one of the co-inventors listed upon a Google patent related to search engines and web spam, which was the first to publicly propose using historical data to identify link spam.

Inbound links (1)

An inbound link is a hyperlink transiting domains.

What are inbound links?

An inbound link is a hyperlink that directs you to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes “one way” in direction. It is thought by many industry experts that this type of link is considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. Inbound links are also referred to as incoming links or one way links. An effective way to utilize this method of linking is by circulating articles through various content forums and media or by link baiting.

Live Search (1)

Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search and MSN Search) is the name of Microsoft's web search engine.

What is Live Search?

Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search and MSN Search) is the name of Microsoft's web search engine, designed to compete with the industry leaders Google and Yahoo!. Live Search is accessible through Microsoft's Live.com and MSN.com web portals. Currently, Live Search is the fourth most used search engine after Google, Baidu, and Yahoo!

META tags (1)

Meta tags or meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page.

What are meta tags?

Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes. The meta element has four valid attributes: content, http-equiv, name and scheme. Of these, only content is a required attribute.

Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site.

They have been the focus of a field of marketing research known as search engine optimization (SEO), where different methods are explored to provide a user's site with a higher ranking on search engines. In the mid to late 1990s, search engines were reliant on meta data to correctly classify a webpage and webmasters quickly learned the commercial significance of having the right meta element, as it frequently led to a high ranking in the search engines - and thus, high traffic to the website.

As search engine traffic achieved greater significance in online marketing plans, consultants were brought in who were well versed in how search engines perceive a website. These consultants used a variety of techniques (legitimate and otherwise) to improve ranking for their clients.

Meta elements have significantly less effect on search engine results pages today than they did in the 1990s and their utility has decreased dramatically as search engine robots have become more sophisticated. This is due in part to the nearly infinite re-occurrence (keyword stuffing) of meta elements and/or to attempts by unscrupulous website placement consultants to manipulate (spamdexing) or otherwise circumvent search engine ranking algorithms.

While search engine optimization can improve search engine ranking, consumers of such services should be careful to employ only reputable providers. Given the extraordinary competition and technological craftsmanship required for top search engine placement, the implication of the term "search engine optimization" has deteriorated over the last decade. Where it once implied bringing a website to the top of a search engine's results page, for the average consumer it now implies a relationship with keyword spamming or optimizing a site's internal search engine for improved performance.

Major search engine robots are more likely to quantify such extant factors as the volume of incoming links from related websites, quantity and quality of content, technical precision of source code, spelling, functional v. broken hyperlinks, volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic, time within website, page views, revisits, click-throughs, technical user-features, uniqueness, redundancy, relevance, advertising revenue yield, freshness, geography, language and other intrinsic characteristics.

Meta keywords (1)

On the web, a keyword is a reference to the content and/or the type of meta element included in a given web page's HTML code to aid in the page's indexing.

What are meta keywords?

On the web, a keyword is a reference to the content and/or the type of meta element included in a given web page's HTML code to aid in the page's indexing. A keyword meta element may include several comma-separated keywords (or keyword phrases, each of which may contain several individual words) as follows:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword, another keyword, one more keyword" />

Looking back to the 90s, the search engine crawlers were relatively poor in terms of analysis capabilities, and, thus, the meta keywords were a simple way to detect the topics of a page. Historically, it has been the first way to optimize for search engines, however, no major search engine today claims to read the keywords which has raised the question of whether they are still needed at all.

MySQL (1)

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

What is MySQL?

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

The name "MySQL" is officially pronounced /maɪˌɛskjuːˈɛl/ (My S Q L), not "My sequel" /maɪˈsiːkwəl/. This adheres to the official ANSI pronunciation; SEQUEL was an earlier IBM database language, a predecessor to the SQL language. However, the developers did not take issue with the pronunciation "My sequel" or other local variations.

The project's source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. On April 20th, 2009 Oracle Corp., which develops and sells the proprietary Oracle database, announced a deal to acquire Sun Microsystems.

 

Search Engine Marketing (0)
Search Engine Optimization (4)

Search engine optimization (SEO)is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results.

What is black hat SEO?

In recent years, the terms black hat and white hat have been applied to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Black hat SEO tactics, also called spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines' terms of service, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines

What is white hat SEO?

In recent years, the terms white hat and black hat have been applied to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Black hat SEO tactics such as spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines' terms of service, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.

What is link bait?

Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention." Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.

The quantity and quality of inbound links are two of the many metrics used by a search engine ranking algorithm to rank a website. Link bait creation falls under the task of link building, and aims to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a website. Part of successful linkbaiting is devising a mini-PR campaign around the release of a link bait article so that bloggers and social media users are made aware and can help promote the piece in tandem. Social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a single web page. Sustainable link bait is rooted in quality content.

Types of link bait

Although there are no clear-cut subdivisions within link bait, many attempt to divide them into types of hooks. This is a short list of some of the most common approaches with brief descriptions:

  • Informational hooks - Provide information that a reader may find very useful. Some rare tips and tricks or any personal experience through which readers can benefit.
  • News hooks - Provide fresh information and obtain citations and links as the news spreads.
  • Humor hooks - Tell a funny story or a joke. A bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons can also prove to be link bait.
  • Evil hooks - Saying something unpopular or mean may also yield a lot of attention. Writing about something that is not appealing about a product or a popular blogger. Provide strong reasons for it.
  • Tool hooks - Create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.
  • Widgets hooks - A badge or tool, that can be placed or embedded on other websites, with a link included.
What is the maximum length for the page title in Google?

The maximum title length that Google will index and display in 66 characters including punctuation and spaces. If your page title length exceeds the maximum length, Google will cut off the title at the last full word.

Forum signature linking (1)

Forum signature linking is a technique used to build backlinks to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in their member's signature.

What is forum signature linking?

Forum signature linking is a technique used to build backlinks to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in their member's signature. This can be a fast method to build up inbound links to a website; it can also produce some targeted traffic if the website is relevant to the forum topic. It should be stated that forums using the nofollow attribute will have no actual Search Engine Optimization value.

Link spam (1)

Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

What is link spam?

Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.

Link farms 
Involves creating tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known humorously as mutual admiration societies.
Hidden links 
Putting links where visitors will not see them in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.
"Sybil attack" 
This is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality disorder patient "Sybil". A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.
Spam blogs 
Spam blogs, also known as splogs, are fake blogs created solely for spamming. They are similar in nature to link farms.
Page hijacking 
This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites.
Buying expired domains 
Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. However Google resets the link data on expired domains.

Some of these techniques may be applied for creating a Google bomb, this is, to cooperate with other users to boost the ranking of a particular page for a particular query.

Nofollow (1)

Nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index.

What is the nofollow attribute?

Nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring.

Reciprocal links (1)

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic.

What are reciprocal links?

Reciprocal links are mutual links between two websites for the purpose of ensuring mutual traffic as well as facilitating the ability for a website to increase its popularity by linking with other sites. If Scott’s website links to Claire’s website, and Claire’s website links to Linda’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Reciprocal linking is an integral part, although decreasingly important, of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process because Google utilizes link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.

Spamdexing (1)

Spamdexing involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

What is spamdexing?

Spamdexing (also known as search spam or search engine spam) involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users.

Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the META keywords tag, others whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page. Many search engines check for instances of spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes. Also, people working for a search-engine organization can quickly block the results-listing from entire websites that use spamdexing, perhaps alerted by user complaints of false matches. The rise of spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the leading search engines of the time less useful.

Common spamdexing techniques can be classified into two broad classes: content spam (or term spam) and link spam.

Web accessibility (1)

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities.

What is Web accessibility?

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality. For example, when a site is coded with semantically meaningful HTML, with textual equivalents provided for images and with links named meaningfully, this helps blind users using text-to-speech software and/or text-to-Braille hardware. When text and images are large and/or enlargable, it is easier for users with poor sight to read and understand the content. When links are underlined (or otherwise differentiated) as well as coloured, this ensures that color blind users will be able to notice them. When clickable links and areas are large, this helps users who cannot control a mouse with precision. When pages are coded so that users can navigate by means of the keyboard alone, or a single switch access device alone, this helps users who cannot use a mouse or even a standard keyboard. When videos are closed captioned or a sign language version is available, deaf and hard of hearing users can understand the video. When flashing effects are avoided or made optional, users prone to seizures caused by these effects are not put at risk. And when content is written in plain language and illustrated with instructional diagrams and animations, users with dyslexia and learning difficulties are better able to understand the content. When sites are correctly built and maintained, all of these users can be accommodated while not impacting on the usability of the site for non-disabled users.

The needs that Web accessibility aims to address include:

  • Visual: Visual impairments including blindness, various common types of low vision and poor eyesight, various types of color blindness;
  • Motor/Mobility: e.g. difficulty or inability to use the hands, including tremors, muscle slowness, loss of fine muscle control, etc., due to conditions such as Parkinson's Disease, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, stroke;
  • Auditory: Deafness or hearing impairments, including individuals who are hard of hearing;
  • Seizures: Photoepileptic seizures caused by visual strobe or flashing effects.
  • Cognitive/Intellectual: Developmental disabilities, learning disabilities (dyslexia, dyscalculia, etc.), and cognitive disabilities of various origins, affecting memory, attention, developmental "maturity," problem-solving and logic skills, etc.;
Web development (0)

Web development is a broad term for any activity related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet.

Internationalization (1)

Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

What are internationalization and localization?

In computing, internationalization and localization (also spelled internationalisation and localisation, see spelling differences) are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

Due to their length, the terms are frequently abbreviated to the numeronyms i18n (where 18 stands for the number of letters between the i and the n in internationalization, a usage coined at DEC in the 1970s or 80s) and L10n respectively. The capital L on L10n helps to distinguish it from the lowercase i in i18n.

Some companies, like Microsoft and IBM, use the term globalization for the combination of internationalization and localization. Globalization can also be abbreviated to g11n.

Localization (1)

Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

What are internationalization and localization?

In computing, internationalization and localization (also spelled internationalisation and localisation, see spelling differences) are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

Due to their length, the terms are frequently abbreviated to the numeronyms i18n (where 18 stands for the number of letters between the i and the n in internationalization, a usage coined at DEC in the 1970s or 80s) and L10n respectively. The capital L on L10n helps to distinguish it from the lowercase i in i18n.

Some companies, like Microsoft and IBM, use the term globalization for the combination of internationalization and localization. Globalization can also be abbreviated to g11n.

Yahoo! (1)

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American public corporation with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, (in Silicon Valley), and provides Internet services worldwide.

What is Yahoo?

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American public corporation with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, (in Silicon Valley), and provides Internet services worldwide. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, news, and social media websites and services. Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995.

Yahoo! provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal yahoo.com which provides content including the latest news, Yahoo! Finance gives users quick access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger. The majority of the product offerings are available globally in more than 20 languages.

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