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I'm building a search engine for businesses and I'm wondering if there is a single word for 'how you're found'.

The context is that I need a word to describe a group of properties that determine when the business will show in the search results. The best I came up with is 'Exposure' but my girlfriend thinks its too abstracted.

Any help would be super!

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Do you mean: "How do people normally find you?", like with Yellow Pages, Internet etc.? – nico May 2 '11 at 6:55

6 Answers

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Businesses might refer to their position in search results as their rank, hence PageRank.

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hmm close, I don't think 'rank' is exactly the right word though in the context I have. – Lango May 2 '11 at 8:26
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Originally, these were metadata that you would write in the html and could be indexed by search engines but Google, for example, no longer uses this data.

You could also call these terms search keys or identifiers.

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True, though the businesses we are targeting won't know what metadata means. I do like identifiers though. – Lango May 2 '11 at 8:26
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How about "keywords"?

Which keywords best describe the product/service your business is offering?

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My guess is you want a phrase that is less technical-sounding. How about "tags" or "labels"?

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try findability

The quality of a particular object being locatable.

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Perhaps: Locator(s); Locatability?

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