Geographic Terms
Specific information about the local area that can be included in a local search: zip code, town, county, geographic region, state


Internet Yellow Pages (IYP)
Directory of business phone numbers and locations in a geographic area, organized by category; searchable data base accessed on the Internet


Keywords
Word or phrases used by search engines to locate relevant Web pages; words chosen to improve a site’s search engine placement and ranking


Local Portal
Provides information and website links of interest to residents of a specific area; a virtual gateway to community members


Local Search
Combining a geographic term in a search query to locate suitable providers in a specific area


Pay per Click (PPC)
Method of building traffic whereby site owners bid on search terms (keywords) that link to their site


Page Rank
Google's ranking of a web page’s importance, based on the number and quality of websites linking to it. Uses a 10-point scale, 10 is highest


Relevant Results
The test of a good search is whether the results obtained relate to what the person wanted to find, without a lot of irrelevant links


Search Engine
Method for locating the information available on the Internet; a program that searches Web pages for requested keywords, then returns a list of documents where the query terms were found


    Google and Yahoo, the major general search engines, have both shifted gears to make Local Search a priority when delivering relevant results.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Fine-tuning keywords and page content so the Web site rates high in search engine results


Search Query
Search request, which the search engine compares to the spidered entries, then returns results to the searcher


Search Results (SERPS)
Compiled list of Web pages that a search engine delivers in response to a query; the number of items returned is usually overwhelming (in the millions), so searchers only bother to view results on the first pages


Spider, Search Engine Spider (also called “crawler” or “bot”)
Goes to every page on every web site and reads the information so it can be available to searchers; to “crawl” a site it collects and indexes information from it


Specialized Search Engines
Narrow focus of information crawled and indexed, like medical, business, or shopping sites


Tags and Titles (on Web Pages)
Provide site keywords and information to search engine spiders for indexing a site


Top Ranking
Sites shown on the first page(s) of search results