Webmaster Glossary Terms

AdSense: A very popular advertising revenue program. As a webmaster you simply place a script in your web page. This script uses the resources of Google (for AdSense anyway) to display ads relevant to web page content. Other companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo also offer context sensitive advertising. For more information see our webmaster revenue page.

AdWords: Google's PPC and/or CPM advertising program. As a marketer you simply bid on keywords or sites that you want to have your ads displayed on. For more information see our advertising and web site traffic pages.

Blogging: The word blog is a short form for the term web log. A blog has traditionally been a journal or diary with dated entries. Blogging has become very popular and is now a huge Internet phenomenon. For more information see our blogging page.

CPA: Cost per action. A publishing affiliate will be paid some amount per action such as generating a lead, a sale or other definable event.

CPC: Cost per click. A publishing affiliate will be paid some small amount per click. Each click should represent a visitor to the receiving web site.

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions. Generally a banner advertisement, though many formats are available, will be displayed in return for payment defined by thousands of page views.

Hits: In the web business you will sometimes hear people refer to the number of hits they have received. In the beginning a hit was nearly synonymous with a visitor, but most web pages contain embedded pictures or other content that results in multiple requests per page view.

PPC: An search advertising model that results in payment per click. Initiated by Goto, which became Overture and more recently has been integrated into Yahoo as Yahoo Search Marketing. The PPC model has had a huge impact on the Internet. In short, PPC advertising is a proven, legitimate and sustainable advertising model. Google's PPC offering is known as Adwords.

SEO: Search engine optimization is the process of making your pages rank higher in the search engine result pages. See our search engine optimization page for more information.

Social Networking: Social networking is a phenomena defined by linking people to each other in some way. Digg is a popular example of a social network (using social bookmarking). Users work together to rate news and are linked by rating choices or explicit identification of other members. Generally, social networks are used to allow or encourage various types of activity whether commercial, social or some combination of the the two.

Uniques: Unique visitors are people that arrive at your site using different IP addresses. This number is usually quoted over a time period, such as 3000 unique visitors per day.

Visitors: A visitor is a person that views one or more pages of a web site.