Web 2.0 Glossary (C)

canonical issues (duplicate content) canon = legitimate or official version It is often nearly impossible to avoid duplicate content, especially with CMSs like Wordpress, but also due to the fact that www.site.com, site.com, and www.site.com/index.htm are supposedly seen as dupes by the SEs although it’s a bit hard to believe they aren’t more sophisticated than that. However these issues can be dealt with effectively in several ways including using the noindex meta tag in the noncanonical copies, and 301 server redirects to the canon.

click fraud Improper clicks on a PPC advertisement usually by the publisher or his minions for the purpose of undeserved profit. Click fraud is a huge issue for ad agencies like Google, because it lowers advertiser confidence that they will get fair value for their ad spend.

cloak The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.

CMS Content Management System Programs such as Wordpress, which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills if they so choose.

code swapping (bait and switch) Changing the content after high rankings are achieved.

comment spam Posting blog comments for the purpose of generating an inlink to another site. The reason many blogs use link condoms.

content (text, copy) The part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding and boiler plate are not usually considered to be content.

contextual advertisement Advertising which is related to the content.

conversion (goal) Achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, and sales are examples of conversions.

conversion rate Percentage of users who convert see conversion.

CPC (Cost Per Click) the rate that is paid per click for a Pay Per Click Advertiser.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M from the Roman numeral for one thousand.

crawler (bot, spider) A program which moves through the worldwide web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data.