Internet Marketing Glossary
1. CPA
(Cost Per Action) - CPA involves assigning a fee to different "actions" that users might perform on a website. For example, advertisers might agree to pay .50 for every one of their ads that is clicked on. Another advertiser might agree to pay a percentage of their sales to another website that agrees to display their products. Actions can include subscriptions, online purchases, advertising clicks, or any other terms that the advertiser might agree to.
2. CPC
(Cost Per Click) - A measurement of the cost associated with each click of an advertiser's ad. If an advertiser is using a PPC style of advertising, the CPC would be whatever amount they bid for that keyword. If an advertiser is using a CPM model of advertising, the CPC would be the amount they pay for each one thousand impressions divided by the number of clicks their ad receives. CPC is sometimes used interchangeably with PPC, although the two terms are not necessarily the same thing.
3. CPM
(Cost Per Thousand Impressions) - CPM is a different approach to paid search engine advertising. Advertisers create ads that are displayed with search engine users search for something related to their business. The advertiser agrees to pay a certain amount of money to the search engine for every one thousand times their ad is displayed within the search engine results. Each time an ad is displayed it is referred to as an impression.
4. Crawler
A computer-based program that scans, or "crawls", through websites and compiles information about the site based on the content found there. Crawlers also follow both internal and external links to discover new content. The major search engines utilize crawlers to fan out across the internet in search of new sites to add to their databases with little or no human intervention required. A crawler will often revisit sites that have already been indexed to look for new content, as well. Sometimes called a 'spider' or 'bot'.
5. Directory
A directory is a set listing of websites, usually grouped into categories or topics. As opposed to a search engine (which often finds new sites using a computer-based crawler), directories are usually fixed with a certain set of websites. New sites are most commonly added by directory editors or web-based URL submission forms in which website owners designate the category that most reflects the product or service they offer. Examples: The Open Directory (Dmoz.org), Yahoo! Directory
