Glossary
What is SERP?
A SERP, or search engine results page, is the page a search engine shows for a query: ads, organic results, and features like snippets and answer boxes.
Updated
SERP stands for search engine results page: what you see after you search. It is made up of more than ten blue links.
What can appear on one
- Organic results: the ranked pages.
- Paid results: ads.
- Featured snippets and answer boxes: a direct answer pulled from a page. See featured snippet.
- People also ask, images, videos, maps, news and shopping results.
- AI-generated overviews that summarise an answer and cite sources.
Why look at it
The SERP tells you what searchers want and what you're up against. If the top results are all videos, a text page will struggle. If it's full of ads and shopping results, organic clicks will be lower. Always look at the real results page before choosing a keyword. See search intent.
You can preview how your page will appear with the SERP snippet preview.
Related
- Featured snippetA featured snippet is an answer extracted from a web page and shown at the top of Google's results, above the normal listings.
- Search intentSearch intent is the reason behind a search: what the person wants to find, learn or do. Matching it is the biggest factor in whether a page can rank.
- SERP snippet previewSee how your title and meta description will look in Google on desktop and mobile, and whether either gets cut off.