SEO glossary entries for ‘C’

C-Block: Is used as a metric for evaluating ‘link diversity’, by identifying the third part of a link-provider’s IP address. Link diversity is assumed when links come from a wide range of C-blocks. Diversity is poor when a high proportion of link providers share the same C-block. For example, seo-training-courses.org.uk and thewebdesign.academy currently share the same IP address (5.28.62.17). So their C-blocks (.62) are also identical. And links between them contribute nothing to the link diversity of the pages (or the domains) that they target.
Caffeine: see ‘Google Caffeine’
Canonical Page: The preferred version of a set of pages with very similar content.
Canonical Tag: Loose term for using the HTML <link> element to specify a canonical page for search engines, i.e. by including the rel="canonical" attribute in a <link> element within the <head> of a non-canonical version, and specifying the URL of the canonical version in the link's ‘href’ attribute.
CF: See ‘Collaborative Filtering’.
Checking-in: Web slang for entering your own current location into a location-aware application so as to broadcast your whereabouts to friends within a social network. Particularly associated with Foursquare.
Chrome: Several meanings. Often simply shorthand for Chrome Browser. Less often by programmers to dsscribe the visible graphical interface features of a software application.
Chrome Browser: A web browser produced by Google.
Chrome Web Browser: See ‘Chrome Browser’.
Chromium Browser: In effect, the more frequently released, bleeding edge version of Google's Chrome Browser. Chromium is the open source web browser project from which the Chrome browser draws it's source code. Linux distributions often package this more frequently released code as ‘Chromium Browser’, rather than providing a browser called ‘Chrome’.
CI: See ‘Collective Intelligence’.
Citation: There are two very different meanings relevant to SEO. 1. Generic web citations are simply references to the source of some data, information or resource being referred to. If you want your content to be trusted, which every SEO practitioner does, should use citations as much as possible and mark them up with HTML <cite> tags. Your <cite> elements should, where possible, directly link to web sources. Note, however, that versions of Internet Explorer completely ignore the <cite> element's href attribute, so you will need to also wrap such elements in normal link anchors. 2. In ‘Local Search’, citations have a more specialised meaning. They are websites that describe local businesses, typically listing the business name, address, and phone numbers, e.g. individual items or websites listed on Yell are commonly referred to as ‘Citations’.
Citation Flow: Is a metric promoted by Majestic SEO. It is a number which is supposed to predict how influential a URL is, based on the number of sites linking to it. Obviously, the more links that the site has, the higher its Citation Flow.
Clean Code: In SEO terms, clean code refers to terse, semantic, easily readable and well-structured HTML code. In practice, this means that the HTML should be stripped of all elements and attributes which are devoted to visual formatting, or which are only included in order to support formatting by CSS or JavaScript. So elements like ‘br’, attributes like ‘align’ and divs or spans that function only as wrappers would not be found in ‘clean code’. Ideally, such code would also include aids to readability and edit-ability, e.g. indentation to show logical nesting and brief commentary to explain unusual code usage.
Click: A loose term for a user activating a link, i.e. requesting another web page or resource. This definition does distinguish a ‘Click’ from a ‘Hit’, but does not cover the case of links which are automatically clicked upon by computer programs, e.g. legitimately by search engine robots, or illegitimately in ‘Click Fraud’.
Click Fraud: Theft of revenue from advertisers who are running ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC) adverts, e.g. an automated ‘Bot’ program, running from spoofed IP addresses periodically, ‘clicks’ on your ads, increasing the advertising cost to you. It may be used by the fraudster to directly accrue revenue from the advertiser, or merely to run down and waste the advertising budget of a competitor.
Click Tracking: The use of scripts to track user actions within and/or between websites. Cross-site tracking without the user's permission is considered an invasion of privacy and illegal in many jurisdictions.
Click-through: A metric counting the number of users who clicked on a given advertisement or link.
Click-through Rate: The number of clicks-through per impression of the page containing a given advert or link; usually expressed as a percentage. Abbreviated as ‘CTR’.
Clickbot: An automated ‘Robot’ program that autonomously clicks and follows links. May be used to artificially inflate click counts as part of a ‘Click Fraud’, but may simply be conducting normal data gathering for a search engine, a ‘Web Directory’ or a ‘Link Checker’.
Client-side Tracking: See ‘Tracking Code’. The process of running user-tracking or activity-tracking scripts is also known as ‘Client-side Tracking’, because the little JavaScript programs that report back to a tracking server, actually run inside the user's browser, i.e. in their ‘client’ software.
Cloaking: Cloaking is an SEO term which refers to the practice of showing search engine software one version of a web page, while displaying an entirely different version to human users. Cloaking is generally against the rules on most public search engines and rule violation may result in penalties or an outright ban from the search engine's index. Search engines with a paid inclusion programme, may permit certain forms of cloaking by their fee-paying clients. Agencies that offer cloaking services should be required to demonstrate explicit approval from given search engines for their proposed actions. Several very high profile multinational companies have had their sites temporally removed from Google's main index, because of cloaking which they typically blame on ‘external’ designers and agencies.
CMS: See ‘Content Management System’.
Collaborative Filtering: A method of automatically predicting (filtering) the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users. Based on the assumption that if a person (A) has the same opinion as a person (B) on an issue, A is more likely to share B's opinion on a different issue (X) than to share the opinion of a randomly person about X. Plays a significant role in search engine results rankings, e.g. the result set given to me will be influenced by the preferences expressed or choices made by other people who are known to share my tastes on one or more topics.
Collaborative Tagging: see ‘Folksonomy’
Comment Spam: Irrelevant content and links inserted into blog or forum comments, typically automatically, for the purpose of increasing traffic and search engine trust towards a target site.
Comparative Analysis: One of the absolute foundations of science, i.e. observing the same phenomena under different conditions, where the differences are controlled for, then comparing the observations in order to find patterns that might predictably account for the differences.
Comparative Relations: A term from natural language analysis, referring to comparison adjectives, like: ‘better’ than, ‘cheaper’ than, ‘faster’ than, ‘equal’ to, etc.
Comparative Sentences: A term from natural language analysis, referring to a comparative sentence that expresses a relation between two objects, e.g. "thing A is better than thing B." Comparative sentences are contrasted with ‘opinion sentence’ e.g. "Thing A is great.".
Competitive Analysis: Comparative analysis of SEO performance by competing sites or pages.
Competitive Link Analysis: Comparative analysis of link quality, quantity and sources for competing sites or pages.
Competitor Analysis: Analysis of a competitor's SEO performance. A component of ‘Competitor Auditing’. Distinguishable from ‘Competitive Analysis’ and ‘Comparative Analysis’ insofar as it non-comparative, e.g. detailed analysis of only one specific competitor's strengths and weaknesses.
Competitor Auditing: Evaluation of a competitor for position on a search engine results page. Typically counting and assigning values to factors which are presumed to affect SERP rank for a given search expression.
Connected Marketing: Promoting your own organization and site through participation in the sites, forums, blogs, email lists, and other social media networks of other people and other organisations.
Contextual Advertising: Paid search listings that appear on websites other than search engines, typically on pages with content that has been matched by a computer program to the advertising topic.
Contextual Placement: See ‘Contextual Advertising’.
Conversion: The process by which a user turns a page view into an action desired by a site owner.
Conversion Funnel: A conversion path defined by the site owner or marketing specialist. This path or funnel will typically be defined in and monitored by a tool like Google Analytics. See also ‘Funnel’, ‘Path’ and ‘Conversion’.
Conversion Optimization: See ‘Conversion Optimisation’.
Conversion Path: The sequence of pages and forms that a visitor passes through to complete a defined site goal. Also known as a ‘Conversion Funnel’.
Conversion Rate: The ratio of website visitors who convert page views or visits into actions desired by a site owner, based hints or requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators, i.e. the number of goal achievements divided by the number of visits or page views.
Conversion Tracking: The process of monitoring defined conversions and conversion funnels.
Cookie: A small chunk of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser. When the user re-visits the same site, the site's software will typically retrieve the data stored in the cookie, thereby reminding the website of the user‘s previous activity. Cookies were originally designed to enable websites to remember the state of the site or application when the user left, or to remember users previous habits, actions and preferences. Such records can remain stored in cookies for months or even years. Cookies cannot carry viruses or install malware on users’ computers but tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories — a major, and illegal, violation of privacy in many jurisdictions. If you allow search engines to set cookies, the results of queries you make will be strongly biased by the record of your previous browsing history stored in such cookies. Also known as an HTTP Cookie, Web Cookie, or Browser Cookie.
Cost Per Acquisition: The average cost of acquiring a single visitor or customer.
Cost Per Action: See ‘Pay Per Click’.
Cost Per Click: The charge paid by the advertiser for every click through a Pay per Click (PPC) advert on a search engine result page. The charge is typically proportional to the competition for associating adverts with a given search term.
Cost Per Conversion: The average cost of achieving a site goal, or conversion.
Cost Per Impression: A Google payment plan, in which the advertiser pays per thousand page impressions that the advert receives, i.e. pay per view, rather than pay per click. Often referred to as CPM.
Cost Per Thousand: The cost of using some media channel to reach one thousand people or households. A very popular metric in traditional advertising. Often abbreviated as CPM. CPM is also used by Google to indicate the cost per thousand page impressions that an advert appears on.
CPA: See ‘Cost Per Acquisition’.
CPC: See ‘Cost per Click’.
CPM: See ‘Cost Per Impression’ and ‘Cost Per Thousand’.
Crawler: A computer program which follows links within and between websites, gathering data for the crawler's owner or creator.
CSS: See ‘Cascading Stylesheets’.
CTR: See ‘Click-through Rate’.