Eyetracking and Google search results
– posted July 12th, 2006 by Brian Donohue No comments
Last month I posted a blog about Google search results. Essentially I made the point that recent user tests we conducted highlighted the reality that only the top search results matter in Google. Well, a recent eye-tracking study drives this point home.
The image above shows the results from an eyetracking study on Google search results from Enquiro. The authors tested 50 people each performing 5 different search tasks. Areas coloured red are where people focused most of their attention. The colours change to indicate decreasing areas of visual focus of the participants.
It’s uncanny how consistent their finding are with what I saw during our user tests.
People pay most attention to the top sponsored links (which sometimes there’s a couple of), then look at the top 2 or 3 organic results. This is no suprise.
The eye opener is seeing just how much people ignore everything else, including the sponsored links on the right-hand side of the page.
The lesson is clear — pay to be in the top-page results for Google, or ensure you’re at the top organically. Don’t even bother with the paid results on the right-hand side.
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Categories Design, Search Engine Optimisation
