ExpertGlossary

SEO technique used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see.

While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.

Text on a web page which is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to human visitors. This is sometimes because the text has been set the same colour as the background, because multiple TITLE tags have been used or because the text is an HTML comment. Hidden text is often used for spamdexing. Many search engines can now detect the use of hidden text, and often remove offending pages from their database or lower such pages' positioning.

Text can also be hidden using agent name delivery or IP delivery either to present different text to different search engine spiders or to hide the real HTML source from competitors.

Algorithm which ranks results largely based on unaffiliated expert citations.

See also:

• Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents

In the context of visitors to web pages, a hit (or site hit) is a single access request made to the server for either a text file or a graphic. If, for example, a web page contains ten buttons constructed from separate images, a single visit from someone using a web browser with graphics switched on (a "page view") will involve eleven hits on the server. (Often the accesses will not get as far as your server because the page will have been cached by a local internet service provider).

In the context of a search engine query, a hit is a measure of the number of web pages matching a query returned by a search engine or directory.

Link based algorithm which ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.

See also:

• Jon Klienberg's Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment [PDF]

Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files.

As a note of caution, make sure you copy your current .htaccess file before editing it, and do not edit it on a site that you can't afford to have go down unless you know what you are doing.

See also:

• .htaccess, 301 Redirects & SEO