| deindex | When a web page or pages are removed from a search engine directory. This can be temporary or permanent, and can happen for any number of reasons including a penalty from the search engine, a change in search engine crawl priorities, or a change in location of the page in question. |
| black box | A complex computer program that is poorly understood. Inputs and outputs can be observed, but there is no access to the process itself due to its confidential nature. For example, Google’s algorithm is a black box. |
| exact match domains | (EMD) Exact Match Domains are domains that use a particular keyword or phrase instead of a branded name. For example, seotools.com would be an EMD whereas cognitiveSEO.com is a branded domain. EMDs ranked well for a long time, but in 2012, Google released an update that lowered many EMDs rankings in search. There are still lots of EMDs that rank well for their keywords today, mostly based on whether or not they have quality content. |
| google panda | Google Panda is the name of a series of Google algorithm updates that evaluate a websites quality of content. Websites with low quality content and a high number of ads see a loss in search rankings when the algorithm is updated. |
| hilltop algorithm | Influenced by the HITS Algorithm, and added to Google’s algorithm in 2003, Hilltop assigned “expert” status to certain websites or webpages published about a specific topic that also link to unaffiliated pages about that topic. |
