Search engine terms, definitions and lingo.

Bots (aka Spiders, crawlers)
Bots, also known as Crawlers or Spiders are search engine programs that go out on the internet, follow links, and read through the pages in order to index the site in a search engine. There are many such bots on the net. Most search engines have their own unique version of a bot, such as google bot. It normally takes a bot 1-3 weeks to index a site and add it to a search engine.

Google Bot
Googlebot is Google's web-crawling robot. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google search engine. On this page, you'll find answers to the most commonly asked questions about how our web crawler works. Google bot home page

Keywords (aka Meta Keywords)
Keywords are a list of words and phrases that help search engines index your website, they are part of the hidden HTML code called Meta tags. See Meta-tags.

Meta-tags (aka Meta data)
Meta tags are the hidden HTML tags that some* search engines use to index, rank, and display information about your website in search results. All search engines are different, and most use some combination of tags and content to place your site. BusinessLauncher.com provides services to optimize your meta-data for prime search engine placement.

Meta Description
The meta-description tag is a hidden HTML tag that allows some search engines to display a description of your site in search results.

Spoofing
Trying to trick search engines by adding keywords and meta-data that does not reflect the content of the site. Such as a business site that sells auto parts putting in keywords like "Joe Millionaire" or "spiderman".

Site map (sitemap)
A site map is a single page of links that list all the pages in a website with simple HTML links.

Webring
A webring is a chain of links that run across many websites, linking to the nextsite in the ring.