Google Search Page Terms

Title

In blue, the first line of a search result.

Web address

In green, just under the title. This is the location of the page on the Web and can help you understand at a glance who is offering you the source, what kind of source it will be, and more.

Snippet

The black text under the web address. This text is taken from the source to which the link points and gives an idea of how your search terms appear in the text. It is not a summary of what appears on the link, does not provide full information on a topic, and is not intended to do so. You should always click through to see your search terms (and the information they provide) in context.

Bolded words

The words that appear darker on the screen are your search terms. In some cases, Google automatically finds synonyms for your search terms, so if you search for "kid," you might see "child" bolded in your results.

Natural results

These results are not paid for by anyone and cannot be bought. Google asks over 200 questions about how your query matches different pages it found on the web when deciding which pages to feature and in what order to list them. One reason search engines do not reveal more about how they rank is they don't want people to be able to manipulate the system and get irrelevant or malicious pages highly ranked in the results.

Knowledge Panel

When you search for an entity, such as a person, place, book, movie, character, animal, etc., Google may show a special informational box on the right-hand side of the screen. For example, one appears for the query [brazil].

Search bar

near the top of the results page, where you can see your query and modify it or enter a new one.

Ads

results appearing in the right-hand column, and sometimes at the top of the results in a colored box. These results appear because someone paid for them to be there and only appear if they are relevant to your search. They always are marked with the word "Ads," so you can identify paid results.

Filters

the subject of later lessons, these links in the top navigational menu, just below the search bar on the results page allows users to look specifically at results in one kind of media, or otherwise narrow the results.