indexes web pages based on content, which could include page title, ALT tags, META tags, body text, and other page components

each is different, using a scoring system, or relevance checking system, which is known as their algorithm

gather their content from Spider programs

include AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, and WebCrawler to name a few

is a program that travels the Internet looking for Web documents and places the URL and content related information into a database, which can then be accessed by the user

each spider is different in what they look for, but they all serve the same purpose - to go out and find content

Uniform Resource Locator, an address for a resource on the Internet

takes the form of http://www.digitallycorrect.com

categorizes web sites based on submissions, typically by someone involved with the web site in question

the web site is not indexed by any visiting spiders

the best example of such a directory is Yahoo!

Any document or file that is accessed constitutes a hit

Example:  If a web page contains 9 graphic (image) files, a visit to that page would generate 10 distinct hits (one for the page, and once for each of the graphics for a total of ten)

any time that a user views a distinct page

much more meaningful than  a "hit"

any time that a user visits a web site

the duration of this visit makes up the user session

contain information on web site statistics including items such as page views, most popular pages, least popular pages and so forth

 log files can tell you a lot about  your visitors, it's very important to monitor these files