SERP: understanding and analysing the Google results page

What is a SERP?

The term applies to every search engine, but in France it almost always refers to Google’s page. That page is no longer limited to ten blue links. Google itself sorts its elements into several families in its visual elements gallery of Google Search: text results, rich results, image results, video results and exploration features, such as related questions.

Two worlds share this page. Ads, bought through Google Ads, are labelled “Sponsored” or “Ad”. Organic results cannot be bought: Google writes that advertisers get no special treatment in its rankings “and nobody can pay us to do so” (How Search works). SEO works on the second part, SEA on the first.

What does a Google results page contain?

A Google SERP combines blocks whose presence depends on the query. None of them is guaranteed, and their order varies. The table below links each block to what feeds it.

Sources: Google Search Central visual elements gallery, AI features and featured snippets documentation, Google Ads Help.

Some blocks cannot be requested. For featured snippets, Google’s documentation is clear: its systems decide on their own whether a page makes a good snippet, and no markup lets you claim one. Other blocks have shrunk. Since August 8, 2023, FAQ rich results are shown only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites; HowTo results disappeared, on desktop too, from September 13, 2023.

What makes up an organic result?

A text result breaks down into elements that you can partly influence. Google names them as follows:

• Attribution: favicon, site name and visible URL (domain followed by breadcrumb).
• Title link: the clickable title. Google generates it automatically, from the title tag but also from visible headings, the og:title tag or the text of links pointing to the page (documentation on title links).
• Snippet: the description under the title, mainly drawn from the page content, sometimes from the meta description when it summarises the page better (documentation on snippets).
• Date: the publication or update date estimated by Google.
• Sitelinks: at least two links from the same domain grouped under the result.
• Rich attributes: extra lines such as review stars, made possible by structured data.

So the title and the snippet are not set by you: you supply the material, and Google chooses what to display depending on the query.

Who decides the order: auction, algorithm or proximity?

Three different mechanisms order the same SERP. Mixing them up leads to poor budget decisions.

Ads. Google Ads distinguishes “top of page”, above the organic results, from “absolute top of page”, meaning the very first ad. Sometimes no ad is shown above the organic results: the first ad then appears at the bottom of the page (Google Ads Help).

The local pack. Google uses three criteria: relevance, distance and prominence, meaning how well known the business is, based among other things on links and the number of reviews. Google Business Profile Help states that “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google”. The levers are covered in our local SEO guide.

Why doesn’t everyone see the same SERP?

Because Google adapts results to the context of each search. It says it uses “your location, past Search history, and Search settings”.

Google gives two examples itself. A search for “football” made in Chicago brings up American football and the Chicago Bears; made in London, it turns up soccer and the Premier League instead. A search for “pizza” shows nearby businesses that deliver. The language of the query also sets the language of most results.

Google flags when it personalises a result. The “About this result” feature shows whether your history played a part, and personalisation can be turned off in the settings.

How do you measure your place in the SERP?

Search Console measures a site’s presence in the Google SERP with three metrics: impressions, clicks and average position. Their calculation rules, described in Search Console Help, explain many surprises.

Average position is the average of these best positions. Google gives the example of a page ranked 2nd for one query and 3rd for another: its average position is 2.5. Because an AI Overview or a carousel counts as one position, a page can be “1st” without being the first visible link.

Traffic from AI features is included in the Performance report, under the “Web” search type (AI features documentation). The useful filters and reports are covered in our Google Search Console guide.

What do AI Overviews and zero-click searches change?

They move part of the answer into the SERP itself. Google launched AI Overviews and AI Mode in France on July 22, 2026, on mobile, on desktop and in the Google app (Google France blog, in French).

An AI Overview summarises a topic and links to pages. Google states that “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode”: the page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. The nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex directives limit what can be reused. The topic is covered in our page on AI Overviews.

Zero-click searches predate these overviews. SparkToro measured them in its 2024 zero-click study (July 2, 2024), based on Datos’s clickstream panel: desktop and Android mobile, without iPhones.

The “open web” excludes Google’s own properties and advertisers. A search with no click is not necessarily a failure: according to the same study, the user ends the session in about 37% of cases and changes the query in about 22%.

How do you analyse a SERP before creating a page?

Analysing the SERP for a keyword means observing what Google already shows, to work out the expected format and the space actually available. This reading complements the study of search intent.

1. Run the search in a private window, from your customers’ location, on mobile and on desktop.
2. Spot the blocks shown before the first organic result: ads, AI Overview, local pack, featured snippet. The more there are, the less visible the first organic link is.
3. Note the type of pages that rank: guides, product pages, comparisons, home pages, videos. That type tells you the expected format.
4. Read the related questions and related searches: they are sub-questions to cover in the page.
5. Look at the rich results displayed (stars, prices, images) to see which structured data is useful for this query.
6. After publishing, track the page’s impressions, clicks and position in Search Console, query by query.

A SERP taken up by a local pack calls for work on the Business Profile rather than an article. A SERP made of product pages will not be won by a guide, however good it is.