Search engine results page

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A search engine results page, or SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. SERPs may also contain advertisements, a way for search engines to earn income.

Common examples of these advertisements are displayed on the right hand side of the page (eg. Google Adwords) as small classified style ads or directly above the main organic search engine results on the left.

For frequently requested search terms, search engines do not build the SERP afresh each time. Instead, the search engines build the SERP once and save it for subsequent queries. Periodically the search engine crawls the web and rebuilds the SERP to account for new pages, and to re-rank the pages according to the search engine's own algorithm.

This can take from several days to several weeks before a keyword phrase may have it's SERPs updated which can cause occasional results to be inaccurate or out of date.