Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.4. Sample search engine results page showing the location of organic and sponsored
listings.
search engine crawls, stores, indexes, and ranks based on its own proprietarily algo-
rithm. Web site owners typically do not pay to appear in this index, and it is these
results that usually bring in most of the traffic to the search engine.
Potpourri
: Getting a result summary for your Web site to appear in the organic
results listing is a process known as
search engine optimization
, as one is optimiz-
ing the Web page for a search engine's ranking algorithm.
The other type of search result on the SERP is the advertisement that one typically
pays for. The sponsored-search results, as shown, typically appear in three locations.
They can appear on the right side of the SERP (known as east, also known as the
right rail), above the organic listing (known as north), or below the organic listings
(known as south).
Potpourri
: Web site owners have little control over where their results appear
in the organic listing because they have little control over how a search engine
indexes Web pages. Search engines can, and do, change their indexing.
One of the most infamous major indexing changes occurred with Google just
before the busy Christmas shopping season in 2003. Online businesses that had
invested significant money and effort in getting their Web sites ranked higher in
the organic listings suddenly found themselves out of the top listings.
