The A to Z Guide to the Internet

T

Tags- A Tag is a keyword or descriptive term that is associated with a piece of information, sound clip or video on the World Wide Web. Tags have become one of the most prevalent forms of classifying information on the Internet. What makes the use of tags interesting is that the tags are selected by the author/creator of the website, blog entry or other form of media.

Tags are used in two specific ways. The first use of tags is hidden to the viewer, but “visible” to Internet search engines. When a web master creates a web page, they add tags to the web page to indicate what type of content is on that page. Once the website and its pages (with tags) is submitted to a search engine for review, the search engine will associate the web page with the tags that have been submitted. This is what allows the search engine to give you results based on keywords that you enter into the search engine. For example, when you type “dog leashes” into a search engine, it will produce all of the web pages that have used “dog leashes” as one of the tags for the page.

Tags also provide users with a quick and easy way to navigate the information on the website. Many websites now have tag lists as part of the navigation of the site. Instead of navigating pages in a top down fashion (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, etc) users can click directly on the tag words that interest them the most. Tags are often used in blogs and wiki sites for organic navigation of the site. Some of the most popular sites that use Tags for navigation are Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com), Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us), Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Technorati (www.technorati.com).

When you use tags to navigate a site, you click on the term that is most related to what you are interested in. The website will then show you all of the documents or other media files on the website that relate to that tag.

Although the use of tags is growing in popularity, there are some drawbacks to the method. First of all, since tags are inputting by the author/creator, the use of tags may be misleading. This is especially true in sites that are contributed to by a community of people.

Let’s say that you are selling a specific product (Product A) and want to attract people looking for a competing product (Product B). Even though your website has nothing to do with Product B, you can use Product B’s name in your tags. When anyone searches from Product B, your website will come up in the results.

Also, tags are highly subjective. While one user may label an article with the tags “babies,” “childcare” and “working mom” another may label the same with “nanny” and “children.”

Target Market- This refers to the market segment to which a particular product is marketed. Members of a target market have similar interests that can be based on age, gender, life style or socio-economic grouping. By using target marketing, an Internet marketer can develop a product that speaks to a certain group of people. A key step in developing a product is deciding what the target market is and how to meet the target market’s needs.

Tech support- A service that you call when you have questions regarding your computer hardware or software. The tech support personnel will guide you through fixing your problem over the phone. There are tech support services for your computer model, websites you may be using, your ISP provider and software applications on your computer. Make sure you call the tech support service that most closely deals with the problem you are experiencing.

Telecommute- A work arrangement in which employees have flexibility in working locations and hours. Telecommuters can work from the home, or from another off-site location.

Telecommuting is normally seen in industries that rely heavily on technology or jobs that can be performed over the Internet.

Thread- A topic thread is a string of consecutive message posting to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums. Threads can be organized in ascending or descending order based on the date posted. Open threads are blog posts that allow readers to comment and discuss topics relevant to the blog.

TLD (Top Level Domain)- This is the highest level of the domain name, and appears at the end of the domain name. While “.com” is the most popular TLD, here are a few others:

.edu

.gov

.net

.org

TLDs are also available in the form of country codes (“.us.”, “.de”, etc).

TOS- An anagram for Terms of Service. They are the rules by which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. In order to use an online service, you are required to read and agree to the terms of service.

Traffic- Internet traffic is the term used to refer to user activity on a web site. Each time someone visits a web page, an entry is automatically registered on the web page server’s log file. The log file records the number of times that a piece of information has been requested from the server. This request is commonly referred to as a “hit.”

The web hosting service will provide summaries of activities on the site. Keeping track of the traffic that a website receives is an important part of measuring whether the website marketing and content is working.

Tracking- Online businesses use tracking to tell whether or not their advertising, copywriting and web site design are converting to sales. The key to success for any online business is driving targeted traffic to the website through pay per click advertising, exchanging links, exchanging banners and using SEO techniques.

However, these techniques are useless if a business owner does not know if they are working. Tracking is one of the most powerful strategies for increasing sales and opt-in subscriptions. Tracking is measuring the effectiveness of each source of advertising.

Using advertising link tracker software is one of the quickest methods to track where customers are coming from. The software measures the number of clicks that are received on individual advertisements and then the sales or subscriptions garnered from those clicks.

Trojan- A Trojan Horse computer virus gets it name from the infamous legend of the same name. Just like the Trojans were fooled into letting opposing forces in their gates, a Trojan Horse virus is sneaky. This type of virus disguises itself as a helpful program. Normally, a Trojan virus is distributed in this way:

-A user downloads a program from the Internet because they think it may be useful.  

-Once the program is opened (run) on the user’s computer, the virus is released. Commonly the virus will erase the hard drive or destroy parts of the computer.

-Sometimes a Trojan will hide on the computer undetected, and slowly start transforming files and documents. This way the user does not know how or where they downloaded the virus.