This was a guest post by Reva Health with help from Richard Baxter UK SEO
Understanding users’ behaviour and expectations for web search can be very valuable for site developers and web workers. While many SEO techniques rely on the actual actions of the user, for example mouse clicks or query streams, eye tracking can give us more detailed observations about how users actually interact with the information in front of them.
The fact that the top search results get the most attention from users is self-evident. But a study by Google backed up claims that strategies for scanning search results are different for different task types. These two task types are defined as transactional and informational. It means that you must understand which of these terms describes your website before deciding on SEO and SEM activity.
This is the standard and well known “Google Golden Triangle”
You’ll notice an ‘F’ shaped scan pattern. The eye tends to travel vertically along the left hand-side of the results, looking for relevant words and then scan to the right if something catches the user’s attention.
This is the eye-tracking result for a transaction-oriented query:
and for an information-oriented query:
The difference is considerable, with the eye scanning further downwards along transaction oriented sites, looking for several options, and scanning across for information oriented ones, seeking more information about a particular result. These images present rather bad news for informative websites. While transaction oriented sites can afford to be further down the search listings, information-oriented sites cannot.
Microsoft conducted a similar study on how users respond to a set of search results. They also looked at two kinds of search tasks: navigational (where users are seeking a specific Web page) and informational (where users seek specific information). The analyses showed not only what people mainly look at, but also what they select. Of course, it is clicking rather than looking that has a major effect on the performance of a website.
This table illustrates the percentage of people who looked at the result (in black), versus those who clicked on it (in red).
For navigational search, everyone looked at the first result. When the target was position 2, this dropped to 89%, then down to 56% for 8th, which isn’t so bad.
For informational search, the chance of looking at the item drops further from 94% for position 1, to 22% for position 8. Microsoft results correspond nearly exactly with Google’s triangles.
The decreased probability of clicking on the item is obviously related to the probability of looking at it. However, the dramatic fall for informational search from position 1 to position 2, is explained by the strong confidence users have in search engine performance. Participants were fairly likely to look at the results for position 2 and lower, but were extremely disinclined to click on them.
So what conclusions can be drawn for information-oriented websites? If people trust the ranking determined by search engines like Google more than their own judgement, we should actually optimise our websites for the ‘Big G’, not for the users. All we need to do is to look reliable as, when their goal is to acquire some kind of information, searchers generally don’t care where that information is found, so long as the destination site looks authoritative.
In light of these studies, it seems that I have no excuse anymore when my boss says that the position 3, or even position 2 in the SERPs isn’t good enough. He is right! Being in position 2 is worse by as much as 56% than being in position 1.
A SEO worker’s strategy for increasing traffic needs to be: Get to the top or die trying!
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
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I wonder whether the fact users trust Wikipedia so much makes the informational search results a bit skewed. Everybody knows they can get the answer from Wikipedia so why look further than the first place listing which more often than not is Wikipedia.
More comments from Patrick AltoftI thought being in the Top 10 in listings would be ok. Your pics show that they rarely go past the half-way mark of the page. Very sobering information.
Paul R
I think that even TOP 10 doesn’t give you any guarantee.
TOP 3 – that’s it!
The eyetrack result on information pages will probably be even more narrowed when the “did you mean” factor is in play http://bit.ly/VzCQi
whats strange is the results apply to your ppc ads too if you look. I was always under the impression that position 7 in ppc can be better than 2/3 as people scan down the list. This just shows users looking at the top ads only.
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My website typically gets traffic from information-oriented queries, and the searches that result in us showing up in the top 2-3 are the ones that bring most of the traffic. I have tried Google adwords to get traffic, but had no where the near the success I had with SEO…… that being said, your post is very accurate in my opinion!
More comments from eireburnerThis information is so useful! I’m definitely going to use these studies to figure out the optimal places to put my ads. Thanks for doing this!
Very interesting study. Thanks for sharing this. Whats I found more interesting was that searchers scan the search result vertically downward on the left hand side and only go horizontal right if something attracts their eye. Goes to show how important the first 2 to 3 words in the listing header are.
I've been looking for these heatmaps for quite some time!
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“Being in position 2 is worse by as much as 56% than being in position 1″ http://tinyurl.com/cs85hk
SEO and Eye Tracking for Informational & Transactional Queries: This was a guest post by Reva Health.
Understand.. http://tinyurl.com/cs85hk
Informational vs transactional search eye tracking study: http://tinyurl.com/cs85hk
Great post on information vs transactional queries: http://tinyurl.com/cs85hk
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