A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry

Glossary of terms

Accuracy

| A measurement of the match (degree of closeness) between predictions and real values.

Address

| A unique identifier for a computer or site online, usually a URL for a website or marked with an @ for an email address. Literally, it is how your computer finds a location on the information highway.

Advertising

| Paid form of a non-personal communication by industry, business firms, non-profit organisations or individuals delivered through the various media. Advertising is persuasive and informational and is designed to influence the purchasing behaviour and thought patterns of the audience. Advertising may be used in combination with sales promotions, personal selling tactics or publicity. This also includes promotion of a product, service or message by an identified sponsor using paid-for media.

Aggregation

| Form of segmentation that assumes most consumers are alike.

Algorithm

| The process a search engine applies to web pages so it can accurately produce a list of results based on a search term. Search engines regularly change their algorithms to improve the quality of the search results. Hence, search engine optimisation tends to require constant research and monitoring.

Analytics

| A feature that allows you to understand (learn more) a wide range of activity related to your website, your online marketing activities and direct marketing activities. Using analytics provides you with information to help optimise your campaigns, ad groups and keywords, ...