Glossary Term L – Best Affiliate Programs

Link Farm
A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site. This is done in order to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal link from sites seeking listings. Link farms are a known spam tactic and sites that participate in them are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines.

Link Popularity
The number of other related Web sites that link to your site. In terms of search engine positioning, quality links are more important than the number of links. Search engines are now nullifying or penalizing sites using some link farms and link exchanges such as FFA (Free For All) sites popular with mass search engine submission programs.

Link Rot

Hyperlinks that, when clicked on, send the user to a site that no longer exists or pops up a 404 error page. These are faulty, non-usable links that are meant to be cleaned off a website.

Linkage

How many and how well a site links to other related sites with inbound and outbound links. Good linkage will result in a better rank among search engines.

Listserv

An email list that is about a specific topic of discussion. Listserv is the most common mailing list.

Logger
A hard copy device used primarily to record events which occur during a process.

Login
The act of entering in your credentials, usually username and password, to connect to a computer system or web site. Also the non-secret account name used to gain access to a computer system.

LookSmart
A medium-sized website directory that provides commercial search listings. Its headquarters are in San Fransico, California.

Lycos

One of the oldest search engines, and once one of the most popular. It has now fallen behind leaders like Google and Yahoo.