Internet Marketing: How Searchers Look at Results

People do not read pages when they use the Webthey scan them. So it is no surprise that Web searchers also scan a search results page, instead of starting in the upper-left corner and reading each word.

Searchers seem to use some common approaches when they scan, as revealed by eye-tracking analytics studies, in which test subjects' eye movements are tracked as they look at a computer screen.

Source: Human-Computer Interaction Group at Cornell University

Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
 

Eye movement studies (and other studies) disclose what searchers scan for: 

• Searchers "mentally divide" the page into sections and focus on the organic results area the most. Four out of five searchers ignore the sponsored links (paid listings).

• Nearly all users look at the first three or four organic search results.

• Searchers spend less time looking at organic results ranked below #3, and far less time scanning results that rank seventh or lower, possibly because these results require scrolling down on the page. Eighty-eight percent report scrolling down only when there is no relevant result in the top three.

• Within each result, searchers spend 43 percent of the time viewing the snippet, followed by 30 percent reviewing the title.

If you did not realize it already, you can see that high rankings for search queries are the key to getting noticed. The first hurdle to being clicked by searchers is to get their attentionrank highly on the results page and have an eye-catching title and snippet. But after you get their attention, what makes them click your page?