Search Engine Optimization All-In-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Recognizing and Reading Search Results

In This Chapter

• Reading the search engine results page

• Understanding the Golden Triangle and its impact on rank position

• Introducing blended search into the equation

• Discovering the impact of blended search on the Golden Triangle

In Chapter 2 of this minibook, we discuss organic versus paid results: organic results being the listings that are ranked by perceived merit by a search engine, and paid results (also called sponsored results or sponsored links) being purchased links and ads that appear along with your organic results. In this chapter, you discover what the rest of the results page means, find out about the Golden Triangle, are introduced to blended search results, and discover how blended search is changing the game.

Reading the Search Engine Results Page

Say Mother's Day is coming up, and you want to buy your mother a nice bouquet of roses. (Good for you! No wonder Mom always liked you best.) After going to Google and typing your [roses] search query into the box, you're presented with a results page. The results page contains many different listings containing the keyword, or search word, [roses], sorted according to what Google thinks is most relevant to you. Figure 3-1 shows a Google results page for the query [roses].

We labeled the different parts in Figure 3-1 so that we can explain them one by one. (Note that we're using a Google results page because they get the lion's share of traffic. Plus, there isn't much difference ...