The Search Engine Results Page relates to the web page returned by a search engine in response to a search query. The position of a link reference on the page is known as the Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP)

The SERP listings can be generated in one of the following was:

• automated search engine's spider or bot indexing (all major search engines),
• human indexing into a search engine directory and
• paid-for listing.

Combinations of the above may also be used to generate the search engine listing. However, the first type (automated search engine indexing) is by far the most predominant means for generating search listings.