Definitions beginning with N

Name server

Server answering DNS queries; NS records identify authoritative servers for a zone. Changing those servers requires preserving the zone’s useful data. An authoritative server publishes a zone, whereas a resolver looks up answers for its clients. These functions are distinct.

Reference: IETF · RFC 1034, Domain Names · Source consulted 2026-10-25

Source consulted : Cloudflare · 2026-10-17

In practice: Inventory records to carry over before changing name servers.

NAP

Name, Address and Phone: consistency of a business’s name, address and phone across local listings.

In practice: Check name, address and phone on pages where customers actually try to contact you.

Native advertising

Advertising whose form and presentation blend into the content or interface of the publishing platform.

In practice: Clearly disclose the advertising nature of content where readers encounter it.

Natural language processing

Automatic processing of natural language allowing systems to analyze, understand or generate text and speech.

In practice: Evaluate understanding on the wording and languages the audience actually uses.

Navigation

Menus, links and cues allowing movement through a website and understanding of its organization.

In practice: Ask someone to find three pieces of information without telling them where to click.

Negative SEO

Malicious actions intended to reduce another website’s visibility, though many anomalies blamed on negative SEO have other causes.

In practice: Check internal causes and observed data before attributing a drop to a third party.

Network latency

Transmission delay between network points, distinct from the volume transferable per second. A high-throughput connection can still have high latency. Specify the path and distinguish network delay from server processing and browser work when interpreting measurements.

Reference: MDN : Latency · Source consulted 2026-10-18

In practice: Measure from the places and networks your audience uses before choosing remote infrastructure.

Neural network

Computational model made of layers of units learning relationships from data.

In practice: Compare its errors and cost with a simpler method on the same test set.

Newsletter

Publication regularly emailed to subscribers to share information, advice or offers.

In practice: State the expected frequency and content, then test subscription and unsubscription.

Newsletter unsubscribe

Journey that stops newsletter messages and confirms that the request was processed.

In practice: use the unsubscribe link from every email template sent.

Nginx

Web server and reverse proxy commonly used to serve content, distribute requests and terminate TLS.

In practice: Check routing, caching and logs after a configuration change.

No-code

Approach for building interfaces or automations with visual components without writing most of the code.

In practice: Check data export, component limits and switching cost before building a central process.

No-results state

Message and options shown when search or filter combinations return no items.

In practice: explain the empty combination and offer to change or reset a criterion.

Node.js

Server-side JavaScript runtime also used by many development tools.

In practice: Check supported versions and lock dependencies needed for deployment.

nofollow

Link attribute value signaling that the publisher does not wish to normally endorse or pass signals through that link.

In practice: Use this attribute according to the link’s nature and inspect the final HTML.

noindex

Instruction asking a supporting search engine not to index a page. It does not protect confidential content, and the engine must be able to crawl the page to read the instruction. The crawler must be able to read the directive in the page or HTTP response. Blocking that response through robots.txt can prevent the instruction being observed.

Reference: Google Search Central · Block indexing · Source consulted 2026-10-25

In practice: Check the signal in the final response and avoid blocking the crawl needed to read it.

nosnippet

Directive asking a compatible search engine not to show a text or video snippet for a page in results.

In practice: Test the intended effect on affected pages before suppressing every search snippet.

Null value

Value explicitly representing absence under a data model. In JSON, null differs from a missing property, an empty string, zero and false.

Reference: MDN : null

Source consulted : JSON Schema · 2026-10-17

Prepare zero, empty text, null and an absent field in a test dataset; specify expected handling for each.