The Wittery Blog (The Witty Writer Marketplace)

The Serious/Not Serious Series on Jargon

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS:

SERPS is an internet word that stands for “Stop Entering Restricted Porn Sites”. It is used as a warning sign that appears to sleazy surfers when they repeatedly try to access highly unsuitable web pages.

Being clever, those running the internet know not just what search term has been entered, but what are the intentions of the user. (This is known as “Just Ask Core Knowledge On Form Filtering” or JACKOFF.)  For example, users who search for “how many laid” will get different results depending on whether their previous search was for “fresh eggs” or “Debbie Does Dallas”.

The SERPS warning appears after 69 consecutive rude search phrases, although teenagers do not usually get this far.

“Stop Entering Restricted Porn Sites” is not just a warning sign. It is not a “suggestion” from the search engine either, it is a command. As well as the full-screen warning sign, the computer of the user is infected with a virus. SERPS may therefore be thought of as the virtual clap, and it cannot be cured, even with a visit to www.cure-my-pox.com

No, SERPS is serious, and results in the destruction of the user’s online life. No respectable website will go near a SERPS-infected user, especially not www.virgin.com.

SERIOUSLY:

SERPS stands for Search Engine Result Pages. They are the pages that are returned by  search engines  (ok, let’s just call this Google from here) when you enter a query in the search box. The pages contain a list of website pages that Google (Bing, Cuil) thinks are relevant to your search term.  Your site is likely to benefit from organic (unpaid) traffic if it appears in the organic listing on Page 1 of the SERPS.

Let’s Get Personal

Things are happening with SERPS.  Personalized SERPS is now here to stay and it will be interesting to watch the effect of this on traditional SEO practices over time. Personalization of the SERPS means different users get different SERPS results, depending on their browsing history.  Google is serving up results which it thinks are best suited to you, based on what it knows about you (and it knows way more than you think).

Personalized SERPS is the default setting and most users are unlikely to change the default setting.  Personalized SERPS applies even if you’re not logged into a Google Account.

As a website owner, it’s important to be aware when you’re being served personalized SERPS. The reason?  If you check your site’s SERPS on a regular basis, you’ll get a false sense of where your website appears in the SERPS for others. Google will return your most visited sites high up in your personalized SERPS results. You may end up gloating that your site is appearing in the number one position for your search term, when in fact it could be buried deep down in the SERPS for other users.

Incognito

There are a few ways to get a better indication of where your website appears in the SERPS for others. One of those ways  is to go “incognito” using Google Chrome (please correct me if I’m wrong on this one).  Get your dark shades and grubby rain mac on before taking the following steps:

1. Click on the wrench icon at the top right of the Google Chrome Screen.
2. Click on “New Incognito Window”.
3. “You’ve gone incognito” the new window tells you.  There’s even a spy icon to remind you what you are up to.

Ignorance Can Be Bliss

Probably the best way to improve your site’s positioning in the SERPS? Try Ignoring it most of the time. Don’t spend too much time trying to understand Google and how its algorithm works. Try to understand your users instead.

Concentrate your efforts on developing your engaging content, learning to understand and connect with your website visitors, building relationships and working on elements that will improve the User Experience.  Your efforts in these areas will help your site in the battle for position across personalized SERPS.  These efforts will also help you to get traffic from sources other than search engines. Whilst you’re chasing after your position in the SERPS remember that the search engines are chasing after websites that are optimized for the User Experience. Remember also that SERPS is very fond of dancing.

How much attention do you pay to your website’s position in the SERPS? Do you spend as much time concentrating on User Experience Optimization?

Other Jargon Buster Articles:

Attraction Marketing;  Buzz Marketing;  Content Strategy;  Duplicate Content;  Linkerati; PageRank;  SEO; The Cloud; User Experience

Other Resources:

Nathan Thompson has an informative post over at MarketingExperiments.com which covers the effect that the roll-out of Google Caffeine will have on SERPS results. It is well worth a read. We mentioned  Caffeine in January in this blog. Google announced last week that this new indexing system is now complete. The essential thing to note about Caffeine is that it aims is to provide fresher results to users. In the context of content, this will of course mean that fresh content will continue to become more important and will influence where your website shows up in the SERPS.

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