When you search for anything via any search engine, it gives you back a page full of relevant links and descriptions. This page is called the Search Engine Result Page or SERP. All SERP pages have one thing in common. The most relevant links are generally on the top and gradually as you move downwards the relevancy moves away from your search.
Does SERP Contain Only Relevant Results?
Relevant results with titles, Meta descriptions and snippets are the main focus for a SERP. But, there are many other things that fill up the SERP.
i) Sponsored listings are seen in almost every SERP. They are ads relevant to your searches.
ii) Besides that, image, videos, maps, definitions and books are also present in a SERP.
iii) Search refinements are suggested in specific search engines. They refine general spelling mistakes and suggest common searches.
iv) There are also special customized SERP’s that give you results from a specific website or a group of websites.
Technologies Used to Create SERPs
Every search engine has a unique way of searching. In the beginning, search engines used various search techniques like sequential and binary search. Today, search engines use innumerous algorithms to search for your pages. They use powerful query caching technologies that improve the performance sharply.
Meta tags are used to analyze webpage contents and matched tags form the results. The minimum time a search engine takes to bring the maximum amount of results, the more efficient a search engine is. Many Search engines offer Advanced Searches that help you to narrow your search and give you the most relevant results.
Search Engine Ranking Positions
The position of a link in a SERP determines the number of visitors following the link. Naturally, the links in the beginning are likely to be followed the most. To bring the links to a better position proper Search engine Optimization is needed. This is also called Search engine marketing. Sponsored Listings through SERP’s could be an option but optimizing your websites is the best option. Keywords, Inbound Links and Seniority are also some important aspects that greatly affect your SERP ranking.
SERPs Hide Many Things from You
It may be for faster searches, classified information or keeping logs. Search engines hide many things from you. Today, the most advanced search engines like Google keep track of many things that are invisible to you. They insert tracking codes into SERP’s. These track the type of searches you make and sort out relevant searches that you could make in the near future. This increases the performance. They also keep logs of specific searches.
Too many similar searches could make you pass through a Captcha code. They use this to stop bots from performing searches and decreasing performance. Even there exist several pages that search engine spiders are not allowed to crawl on. These pages are generally the password protected ones and classified ones. You should not expect to get such pages from search engines.
The technology and algorithms behind creating a SERP are so vast and various that it could be a separate field of science today. A small piece of info from me: There are many careless webmasters out in the market who forget to secure their sites properly. You could use search engines to sneak into them.
