You now know that search engines want to provide a great user experience by displaying the most relevant organic and paid listings within their results. But exactly how and where do advertisements appear within the search engines? This is what we’re covering in this section.
As we mentioned in the first part of this chapter, a SERP refers to a search engine results page. This is simply the page of results that you receive from a search engine when you conduct a search. First, let’s dissect a SERP.
Figure 2.1 is a screen capture of a Google SERP for the search query gourmet coffee. Within the image, you can see that we have highlighted the top and right side of the SERP separately from the bottom-left side of the image. The area marked Pay-Per-Click Advertisements (under the Sponsored Links section) contains ads that advertisers are paying to have shown for this particular search query. The section marked Organic Results contains websites that Google has indexed and deemed relevant to this search query.
