Despite being one of the most common sites in the wild and wild nature of the internet, the Google search engine results page, or SERP, is a deceptively beautiful specimen. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the World Wide Web without them. Although Image Masking these beautiful pages share common characteristics, each Google search page is unique. In this field guide, we'll cover how to identify and recognize each individual component of a SERP in the wild, what each of these features does, and how Image Masking the SERP has evolved into one of the most sophisticated pages in the ecosystem. Current internet. Chapter 1: Evolution of the SERP Google search pages were first observed in their natural online habitat towards the end of the 20th century – September 4, 1998, to be exact. Google SERPs were rudimentary in their early days, but still a very effective Image Masking way for internet dwellers to find the information they want. In fact, it was this early dominance over other SERP species that led to Google's natural rise to the top of the internet food chain.
Today, the Google SERP has made countless people the top predators of the Internet. The Google search page is a responsive, intuitive and very powerful tool that millions of people use throughout their day to find the information they Image Masking need in the dense digital jungle of the World Wide Web. Organic results When Google first launched in 1998, SERPs only displayed organic links. Google's indexing software algorithm, later known as Googlebot, crawled pages on the World Wide Web and compiled the results into an index. For the first two years of its existence, Google returned only "organic" or Image Masking non-paying links in its search pages. Organic results will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Two, while Google's newer information tools will be examined in Chapter Four. Even today, it is still possible to see Google SERPs that only show organic results. Indeed, some search terms are clearly informative in nature. For example, a user searching Image Masking for “Abraham Lincoln” is unlikely to be looking to purchase goods or services related to the 16th President of the United States.
As a result, Google does not display advertisements to the user for many information searches. Although Google only showed Image Masking organic results in its early days, that would change just two years after Google launched when it introduced the AdWords advertising platform. Paid results Needing a reliable source of income to survive, Google monetized its search engine in October 2000 with the launch of Google AdWords. Initially, there were only 350 AdWords advertisers. Today, Image Masking millions of businesses around the world use AdWords to reach new customers. As Google's advertiser base has grown, so has the number of ad formats and options available.