Search Engine Results Page

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What is a Search Engine Results Page?

A search engine results page (abbreviated SERP) is a webpage that displays the results of a query of a search engine website. In other words, when you type something into Google and it shows you a page with the results, that is the search engine results page.

Main Features

What the search engine results page looks like depends on the search engine and, in the case of complex search engines, on the query typed into the search box. In its simplest form, the SERP is merely a list of results ranked from the most relevant to the least relevant according to the search engine's algorithms. For web search, each result will also be a link to a webpage.

The query nasa site:reddit.com/r/iama typed into Google's search result page, showing results only from that subreddit.
A screenshot of Google's search results page, showing query nasa site:reddit.com/r/iama, that makes Google search only for webpages in the specified subreddit (see site: Google Search Operator for how it works).

Each result in a results page may have several elements indicating various properties of that result. For an example, see What Each Part of a Search Result Means on Google.

A screenshot of a single search result on Google, each element of the search result labelled: the name of the website, the favicon of the website, the path of the result, the title of the result, the snippet of the result, matches (in bold), the image of the result, and links related to the result.
An overview of each element of a single search result on Google.

A search engine may also include all sorts of information in its results page that don't conform to the simple list format.

A screenshot of Bing's search result pages for the query "solar eclipse 2024."
A screenshot of Bing's search results page.

In particular, the most popular web search engines are also able to do math. If you type 2 + 2 in the search box, they will show a calculator displaying the result of the equation: "4."

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