SERPS

And what the Results are showing you.

If you go to Google http://www.google.com/ you will see the Search Box like in the image below, if you type cows into it and hit the Enter Key on your keyboard or click on the Google Search button you will get their list of pages or files that they have indexed for the term, cows.

Below is what Google returned for the term cows and is know as the Search Results to the average internet user or as the SERPS, as in Search Engine Results Placements, to most website developers.

The term SERPS is mainly looking at where in this list you are listed from position 1 downwards.

 As you can see I have added a few things to the image above for illustration purposes.

1. This is where Google will always show you a breakdown of the results provided they have any.

The first part of information is showing you that you are looking at only 10 results.
The next part of information is showing you that they have approximately 25 300 000 results on record or Indexed.

Next is the term you used for your search as well as a link to the definition of that term if they have that available as well as how long it took them to return the results to you.

As with the cooking shows the list was prepared earlier which accounts for the speed, as they are only pulling the first 10 results from a database compared to doing a search of the internet there and then after you push the search button. This list is also called the index.

Google has a pre made list for all of the terms that it judges worthwhile and if it does not have a list it will offer you what it counts as the most relevant results it has to your query. As well as that sometimes it will ask you did you mean and give you a suggestion for something it has on file, though this is usually if you miss spell something.

2. This is the first listing in the Organic results. As you can see it has other links below it's URL which is because it is counted as an authoritative site. It can be argued that the images are the first organic listing as they will take you to a site if clicked on.

3. These are paid ads and something we will not be covering seeing as we are looking at Organic factors in general, yet it is easy to buy your way into, the cost will vary according to how lucrative the term is as you bid on terms to have your ad appear for.

As you can see on the Star bubble the listings run downwards with the most powerful at the top and working down from there. Currently wikipedias' Wiki, Cattle page is more powerful than cows.org.

Information contained in each listing.

There are several pieces of information contained in each listing so lets have a look at them.

First up is the Blue Clickable Hypertext Link

This is EXACTLY the same as the Page Title Tag for the document being referenced.

The word or words in the link can be referred to as Anchor Text, Hyper Text and even just called a link, though the first two are more accurate as an image can be a link even though there is no word in it.

The second piece of information is the page description.

This is to give the viewer a bit more information about the page being referenced to help them decide if it is what they are looking for or not. This is not always the same as the page description used by the website designer as if the Spider decides it is not accurate enough it will create it's own from the on page content to match what the document is ranking for. Google places no emphasis on your page description tag (they also pay NO attention to your keyword meta description) when it comes to where you will rank yet it is a good practise to write a good page description as it may be the one the Spider uses with your listing.

The third piece of information the viewer has is the actual page that they will be taken to if they click on that link. In this case it is www.cows.ca/ and is displayed in Green as well as in a plain text format.

The last two pieces of information are the Cached view of the page in question. The cache is just a copy of how the page was when Google last visited that page and is what the current page's ranking is based on. If you visit the cached version Google will highlight every instance of the term used in your search with a yellow background color. Also in the header on the Right there is a Text-only version link which if clicked on will show you the same details yet with no images, which is an easy way to see what ALT Text was used in the images and can be less distracting if you are analyzing the pages content.

And lastly is the Similar link which when clicked on will load a list of pages that Google deems to be very similar to the page in question. A lot of times the original site will not appear in this list.

The Takeaway from this is

We want to rank in the first position or as closely as we can for the list that our web page's content most closely matches, as most people using a Search Engine will not go past the first page of listed results. Also your web page is not limited to a single list that it can appear in. At a guess, cows.ca may also appear in the cow t'shirts list as well, seeing as it ranks so highly for the term cows and from the description Google has used we can see it has referenced t'shirts.

Time to be Moving On