So you're ready to dive into the World Wide Web, huh? But do you know what everything
means yet? Let PittsburghLIVE help you out. Listed below are some terms that you'll hear
often when you are talking about the world of the Internet.
Banner - One of the many forms of online advertising. In a newspaper it's called an ad space; on TV
it's called a commercial.
Banner Rotation - Refers to an online banner advertisement being placed into a rotation with other
online ads.
Content - Refers to the articles and information that make up a web site.
Hit - An imprecise term referring to the number of computer files sent to a viewer's computer. Your
computer has to ask the "hosting" computer to send the page to you. The host breaks the page into bits
and pieces. Each time it sends a piece of the page, that is one hit. One page could represent 50 hits.
For this reason, hits are NOT a valid standard to determine the traffic of a web site.
Home Page - Is the first page of a web site (when someone has multiple pages, the home page is the
first thing that will "pop" up on your browser).
ISP - Internet Service Provider. An ISP is a company that gives you the connection to the network of
computers so that your computer has the ability to communicate with other computers (example:
Stargate Industries, http://www.stargate.net; www.stargate.net).
Page View / Impression - A hit that successfully retrieves content or when a page is actually called up
on a users machine. These do not include images, ad views, graphics, logos, etc. A page view IS a
valid means to determine web traffic.
Server - A computer that is capable of displaying information in an acceptable format on the Internet.
Text Link - Another popular way of promoting a web address. A text link is simply a word or group of
words linked to another web address.
Traffic - People who visit a web site are said to be traffic, the same way that a newspaper user is
considered readership.
URL - Universal Resource Locator, also referred to as a Domain Name. Simply put it's a web site
address. (example: http://www.pittsburghlive.com; www.pittsburghlive.com).
Visit - A series of consecutive requests from a user to an Internet site.
Web Site - A web site can consist of a single page or thousands of pages, depending on how in-depth
you want to get (PittsburghLIVE.com consists of over 500,000 web pages). Once you type in a
company's web address or URL it will direct you to your destination (not much different than dialing
someone's phone number).
