Why Top Search Engine Ranking for Google Matters - Eyetracking Study Outlines SEO Importance of a High Search Results Rank
http://entrepreneur.pro/articles/15/1/Why-Top-Search-Engine-Ranking-for-Google-Matters---Eyetracking-Study-Outlines-SEO-Importance-of-a-High-Search-Results-Rank/Page1.html
Constantine Giorgio Roussos
By Constantine Giorgio Roussos
Published on 09/9/2008
Why does achieving a top searching engine ranking in Google matter? An updated eyetracking study conducted by Think Eyetracking reveals the importance of attaining the highest possible search placement in Google as well as a change in user search behavior.
According to ComScore, Google had 11.8 billion US search queries in July 2008. The latest trend in search behavior is that searchers have more demanding expectations from Google and have a shorter attention span than ever before. There was a time when people would click though a many pages of search results but not anymore. Today, if you don’t rank in the top 3 results, searchers will barely notice your listing.
Think Eyetracking recently completed an eyetracking study and compared it with an eyetracking study they did in 2005 for people looking at a Google search results page. As seen in the heatmap illustration, most people primarily focus around the top 5 results and the majority of clicks are upon the top 3 results (when you discount the sponsored link). The sponsored link was actually not well attended to due to the fact that searchers are now familiar with advertiser placement within Google.
The 2008 heatmap supports the recent trend observed by Cornell University (Their study found that the top 3 Google results get 79% of all clicks) and by AOL (Findings were that 63% of clicks were concentrated upon the top three search results). What do searchers do when they don’t find the results they want immediately? Nearly 9/10 users indicated that they would just modify the search terms or refine the search by category.
Think Eyetracking recently completed an eyetracking study and compared it with an eyetracking study they did in 2005 for people looking at a Google search results page. As seen in the heatmap illustration, most people primarily focus around the top 5 results and the majority of clicks are upon the top 3 results (when you discount the sponsored link). The sponsored link was actually not well attended to due to the fact that searchers are now familiar with advertiser placement within Google.
The 2008 heatmap supports the recent trend observed by Cornell University (Their study found that the top 3 Google results get 79% of all clicks) and by AOL (Findings were that 63% of clicks were concentrated upon the top three search results). What do searchers do when they don’t find the results they want immediately? Nearly 9/10 users indicated that they would just modify the search terms or refine the search by category.