String skipping is a guitar-playing technique that is used mainly for solos and complex riffs in rock and heavy metal songs.
In more traditional styles, the guitarist will often play several notes on one string, then move to the adjacent one, improvising on the fretboard in a melodically linear manner.
Notice that not every note played represents a string-skip; it is usually the case that string skipping is interwoven with traditional adjacent riffing.
Guitarist Shawn Lane utilized string skipping throughout the instrumental pieces "Get You Back" and "Not Again", among others on the Powers of Ten album.
[1][2] Another specific example of string skipping can be heard in the instrumental piece "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson, during the intro (measures 6 and 7).