Aug 14, 2008
All search engines have what is called a search engine results page or (SERP’s). The serp’s are different for each search engine but their are some basic parameters on search engine results pages.
At the top is the statistics bar that will show how many indexed pages there are in the search engine for that particular keyword. It will say 1-10 of so many. Next to that is the keywords that the search engine is pulling back information from. These are the keyword or keywords that a user has typed into the search query. The search engine will go into its index to find that keyword and if a user types multiple keywords it will match the information with the words together to pull back the most relevant information. Next to the words is the time that it took the search engine to pull back the information.
Looking at the page at the top under the statistics bar there could be sponsored links, There can be a maximum of 3 listings here and are called banner listings. The sponsored listings at the top will be in a light shaded background. To the right side of the page are more sponsored links going down the page. These sponsored links are pay-per-click ads where advertisers are paying so much money every time a user clicks on their ad.
The large white space in the middle of the page is the natural or organic listings starting at #1 and going down to #10.
The title will be in blue and is the title of the page. If the title has the keyword in it it will be bolded. Under the title is the snippet of what the webpage is about. This is either the meta description of a page or a snippet that the search engine took from the webpage and is in black. The webpage address is located under the description/snippet and is in green.
Sometimes there may be a second page from the same site that will show up for the same keyword. If this is the case then the second result will be indented indicating that a website has two pages that show up for the specific search query.
Next to the url of the webpage is links to see cached, similar results, or more results from the website. The cached button will show when the search engine last cached the page.
At the bottom of the page will be more pages that a user can go to to see more information and results. Here is a picture of the different components of a Google search engine results page:
Google search engine results page
Very nice description of what is really being listed. This will help a lot of average internet users identify what is really being said when they look at a results page.
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