Do you know what a SERP is? You’ve heard it thrown around the SEO world, and Google is constantly tweaking the results they show when you input a query. Let’s break down what these results are, as well as what are organic search results, paid search, and enhanced search results that include universal results like knowledge panel, answer boxes, and more.
What exactly is a SERP?
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. These results can look very different for each user and depend on what type of search you do. That is because Google continues to add new features garnering semantically relevant search results that are personalized to each user and device.
Google has a few general types of search results which can be viewed more in depth here. For now, this article will show you a few different types so you can familiarize yourself with the SERP lingo.
Examples of the Top Google Search Results
Basic Result: This is a basic result with “blue lines” and not many enhancements or other features like images and shopping. These results typically show two types of results —organic and paid. Nowadays, this result is often difficult to trigger because Google is more often displaying rich results (with images,etc.) to the SERP.
Enriched Search Results: These are the most interactive set of search results and the most common type of search result you’ll see. Some of the features include knowledge graph, product listing ads, carousels, local pack, answer box, and more. Google is constantly changing the algorithm and testing new types of search results for the most intuitive and robust results.
Knowledge Graph: This type of search result is on the right-hand side and will display information like company info, social media profiles and other information that could tell a user about the brand, person, thing, or place.
Product Listing Ads: These results are paid ads from the companies who want their websites to show up in the Google shopping results.
Carousels: These are part of Google’s knowledge graph and pull information from across the web in an attempt to deliver semantically relevant results. Google is creating the ability to answer a user’s query right in the search results.
Answer Box: This is meant to answer quick and easy questions and is displayed at the very top of search results with a dark box around to make it stand out.
Local Pack: When searching locally, this result is shown with a “local three pack” of the top businesses that match your query.
Now that you know a little more about Google SERPs, it is important to understand that almost all of these universal search results are triggered with the intention of getting clicks. Meaning, the more your website can rank for any of these enhanced search results, the better the odds that people will be clicking on your result. More enhanced search results = more traffic. As will all things SEO, there are many factors that go into making sure your website can rank for these search results. Things like schema, keyword content, ensuring your website is well optimized, and having good site architecture are key.