Glossary Terms
R
Recall
The portion of relevant documents that were retrieved when compared to all relevant documents.
Reciprocal Links
Nepotistic link exchanges where websites try to build false authority by trading links, using three way link
trades, or other low quality link schemes.
When sites link naturally there is going to be some amount of cross linking within a community, but if most
or all of your links are reciprocal in nature it may be a sign of ranking manipulation. Also sites that trade
links off topic or on links pages that are stashed away deep within their sites probably do not pass much
link authority, and may add more risk than reward.
Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers
are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for
relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inlink and outlink ratios as well as link quality when
determining how natural a site's link profile is.
See also:
Indexing Timeline - Matt Cutts states that sites which have many low quality inbound links and / or outbound
links may struggle to rank or even get deeply indexed by Google.
Live Search: Linkdomain:SEOBook.com LinkFromDomain:SEOBook.com - shows SEOBook.com's
reciprocal links
What a Links Page Should Not Look Like - article by Jim Boykin
Redirect
A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved. 301 redirects are for
permanent change of location and 302 redirects are used for a temporary change of location.
Registrar
A company which allows you to register domain names.
Reinclusion
If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on
the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search
index.
See also:
Google Reinclusion - sign up for Google Sitemaps, and request reinclusion from within Google Sitemaps
Yahoo! Reinclusion - request a review here Yahoo! Search: URL Status - Second Review Request
Referrer
The source from which a website visitor came from.
Relative Link
A link which shows the relation of the current URL to the URL of the page being linked at. Some links only
show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to
canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.
Example relative link
<a href="../folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a>
Example absolute link
<a href="http://seobook.com/folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a>
Relevancy
A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
Many search engines may also bias organic search results to informational resources since commercial
ads also show in the search results.
See also:
Google vs Yahoo! vs MSN - compares the relevancy algorithms of the three major search engines
Search Engine Relevancy Challenge - survey of search relevancy based on user voting
Reputation Management
Ensuring your brand related keywords display results which reinforce your brand. Many hate sites tend to
rank highly for brand related queries.
Resubmission
Much like search engine submission, resubmission is generally a useless program which is offered by
businesses bilking naive consumers out of their money for a worthless service.
Rewrite (see URL Rewrite)
Reverse Index
An index of keywords which stores records of matching documents that contain those keywords.
See also:
Google: a Behind the Scenes Look - video where Jeff Dean talks about Google's architecture
FantomNews - archived newsletter featuring a Chris Ridings article about stop words and reverse indexes
Robots.txt
A file which sits in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl. Some search engines
will still list your URLs as URL only listings even if you block them using a robots.txt file.
Do not put files on a public server if you do not want search engines to index them!
See also:
Robotstxt.org
ROI
Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar.
While ROI is a somewhat sophisticated measurement, some search marketers prefer to account for their
marketing using more sophisticate profit elasticity calculations.
RSS
Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication is a method of syndicating information to a feed reader or
other software which allows people to subscribe to a channel they are interested in.
S
R
Recall
The portion of relevant documents that were retrieved when compared to all relevant documents.
Reciprocal Links
Nepotistic link exchanges where websites try to build false authority by trading links, using three way link
trades, or other low quality link schemes.
When sites link naturally there is going to be some amount of cross linking within a community, but if most
or all of your links are reciprocal in nature it may be a sign of ranking manipulation. Also sites that trade
links off topic or on links pages that are stashed away deep within their sites probably do not pass much
link authority, and may add more risk than reward.
Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers
are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for
relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inlink and outlink ratios as well as link quality when
determining how natural a site's link profile is.
See also:
Indexing Timeline - Matt Cutts states that sites which have many low quality inbound links and / or outbound
links may struggle to rank or even get deeply indexed by Google.
Live Search: Linkdomain:SEOBook.com LinkFromDomain:SEOBook.com - shows SEOBook.com's
reciprocal links
What a Links Page Should Not Look Like - article by Jim Boykin
Redirect
A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved. 301 redirects are for
permanent change of location and 302 redirects are used for a temporary change of location.
Registrar
A company which allows you to register domain names.
Reinclusion
If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on
the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search
index.
See also:
Google Reinclusion - sign up for Google Sitemaps, and request reinclusion from within Google Sitemaps
Yahoo! Reinclusion - request a review here Yahoo! Search: URL Status - Second Review Request
Referrer
The source from which a website visitor came from.
Relative Link
A link which shows the relation of the current URL to the URL of the page being linked at. Some links only
show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to
canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.
Example relative link
<a href="../folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a>
Example absolute link
<a href="http://seobook.com/folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a>
Relevancy
A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
Many search engines may also bias organic search results to informational resources since commercial
ads also show in the search results.
See also:
Google vs Yahoo! vs MSN - compares the relevancy algorithms of the three major search engines
Search Engine Relevancy Challenge - survey of search relevancy based on user voting
Reputation Management
Ensuring your brand related keywords display results which reinforce your brand. Many hate sites tend to
rank highly for brand related queries.
Resubmission
Much like search engine submission, resubmission is generally a useless program which is offered by
businesses bilking naive consumers out of their money for a worthless service.
Rewrite (see URL Rewrite)
Reverse Index
An index of keywords which stores records of matching documents that contain those keywords.
See also:
Google: a Behind the Scenes Look - video where Jeff Dean talks about Google's architecture
FantomNews - archived newsletter featuring a Chris Ridings article about stop words and reverse indexes
Robots.txt
A file which sits in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl. Some search engines
will still list your URLs as URL only listings even if you block them using a robots.txt file.
Do not put files on a public server if you do not want search engines to index them!
See also:
Robotstxt.org
ROI
Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar.
While ROI is a somewhat sophisticated measurement, some search marketers prefer to account for their
marketing using more sophisticate profit elasticity calculations.
RSS
Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication is a method of syndicating information to a feed reader or
other software which allows people to subscribe to a channel they are interested in.
S
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