---
title: Linking to a search engine results page
---

**Linking to a search engine results page**, such as a Google search results
page, can produce unexpected results because a [search engine results page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_results_page)
(SERP) changes rapidly and may even be personalized, leading to nonidentical
content for different people or across time.

In some cases, a link to a search engine results page may be more durable. For
instance, a software project may have migrated from SourceForge to GitHub,
making the old SourceForge link obsolete, whereas the SERP may show the
"correct" link as the top result. Another example is a blog whose URL structure
has changed; the old post URL might break but searching for the post title
could yield the "correct" location at each point in time.

[Tim Pope laments](https://twitter.com/tpope/status/855197062928924673):

> remember when the first google result for "commit message" used to be my blog
> post? how the mighty have fallen