Search Engines Explained (Part 3)

In Part 1 of Search Engines Explained, I talked about how the Search Engines (SE) find and index your web site and Part 2 talked about the basics of how SE process the search query.  Today we'll wrap things up with a discussion of the final result, the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Regardless of the SE used, the SERPs will display two main search listings: the free crawler-based listings and the sponsored listings.  Depending on the SE you currently use, there may be more listings available, such as directory listings, image listings, and shopping listings.

Crawler-based listings, sometimes referred to as free, natural, or organic, are the staple of most SE.  For our purposes, I will refer to these listings as organic.  These listings are the direct result of all the work the SE has performed finding, indexing, and ranking.  Most SE will tell you approximately how many web pages were found using the given search query.  For example, the Google search query "public golf courses in new jersey" displays this: Results 1 - 10 of about 880,000.

Pro Tip:  The 880,000 figure represents the approximate amount of web pages that may be relevant to your search query.  In reality, only about 1,000 results are actually available to be clicked on.

Keep in mind that not all SE have their own spiders and do their own indexing and ranking.  Currently there are only a handful of SE that do this themselves, with Google, Yahoo and MSN being the major players.  For the other SE, they purchase the results from one of these major players and return those results to their searchers.  For an up-to-date look at who provides the search results for which SE, have a look at Bruce Clay's Search Engine Relationship Chart.

Operating your own organic SE takes a lot of resources, both hardware and software.  This is a tremendous expense that needs to be paid for.  Enter the sponsored listings, or more commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) listings.  The two biggest players in this game are Google AdWords and Overture (now called Yahoo! Search Marketing).

The model here is very simple.  Advertisers bid on certain search keywords to have their advertisement displayed next to (or on top of) the organic listings for their selected keywords.  Your placement is based on how much money you bid compared to the other advertisers.  When a searcher clicks on your ad, your bid amount will be deducted from your account by the SE.  Bid amounts can range from $.10 to $10 and more for very competitive search keywords.

Pro Tip:  To get an idea of what advertisers are currently paying for your main search terms, go to Overture.com, enter your search keywords and click Search.  On the resulting SERP, click on the link that says View Advertisers' Max Bids (you'll find it near the top right corner).  After entering a security code, each listing will display and the amount of money they are paying Per Click.

If you want the top spot on Overture, you simply have to bid more than the current top bidder.  Google's AdWords program takes the ranking a step further.  In addition to the bid amount on the search keyword, Google also looks at the ad's click through rate.  If the ad doesn't pull enough clicks, the ad is dropped no matter how much you want to bid.

I have only scratched the surface with this series on Search Engines Explained.  Future posts will expand on these basic principles.  If there are specific topics that you would like me to address, please use the comment form and suggest away.