An applet is a small Java based program that usually runs in a web browser as part of a web page. Using such a program may cause spiders and robots to stop indexing a page.

Application Program Interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools used to access software applications. Most major search products have an API program.

Arbitrage is a method wherein assets are bought and sold for a profit. With regards to the search market, many content sites that are making a profit through ads purchase traffic from search engines in the hopes that they can make a higher profit from someone clicking back on a higher cost advertisement. Many shopping search engines draw their traffic through arbitrage.

Ask is a search engine that was initially called “Ask Jeeves” but was shortened to “Ask” in 2006

ASP is an abbreviation for Active Server Pages which is a programming language that is used in building dynamic websites.

Attribute is an HTML term used to define the aspects of a page.

ATW is an abbreviation for AllTheWeb, which is a search engine powered by FAST. See AlltheWeb for more info.

Audience reach is the number of internet users that use a particular search engine in a month. With the inclusion of the amount of hours used to search on the internet, this is used to calculate the popularity of a search engine.

Authority is the ability of a site or page to rank well in search engines. There are five factors to consider with regards to the authority of a site or page. These are the link equity of the site, age of the site, traffic trends, site history, and content.

Automated bid management software is a type of software used by websites to control the overall costs of advertising. It can increase the profitability of a website if the software is used in tandem with an analytical software.

Automated submission refers to the submission of URLs or web pages to various search engines using a software especially designed for this purpose. Some search engines frown upon this practice.

B2B is an abbreviation for Business to Business which is a marketing strategy that involves a business transaction between businesses.

B2C is an abbreviation for Business to Consumer. It is a direct transaction between a business and a consumer.

Back links are links that originate from a website that point to another webpage. Backlinks are important for Search Engine Optimization because they affect the PageRank of a website and it influences the site’s search rankings.

Backward link is another term for back link.

A bad neighborhood is any website that uses Black Hat SEO methods or sites that does harm to the visitors of a site. There sites includes sites that practice cloaking, sites that install viruses or malware, spammers, and link farms. Linking from these sites or to these sites can get your site penalized or banned by search engines.

Bait and switch is a technique used to get a visitor of a site to click on a link that is irrelevant to the search. The visitor takes the bait and the result is switched. This is considered as a spam technique

Banned is when a site is blacklisted by search engines. This means that the site is removed from search results. Sites are usually banned because of black hat SEO methods.

A banner ad is usually a rectangular shaped advertisement located at the top or at the side of a website. When clicked, the visitor is taken directly to the site of the advertisement.

Banner blindness refers to the internet users disregard for banner ads in websites simply because they have been used to seeing these ads in sites that they usually find them useless and ignore them.