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If your listing is not in the golden triangle your odds of being
seen by a searcher are dramatically reduced |
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New EyeTracking Study verifies the importance of page position and rank in both Organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through.
A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a "golden triangle."
The first phase of the study was conducted with 50 people in Eyetools' eye tracking lab in San Francisco, California and presented panel participants with 5 distinct scenarios that would require the use of a search engine. Google was used as the search engine in all of the instances.
A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.
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The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.
The study found that most viewers looked at results in an "F" shaped scan pattern, with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention.
The researchers called this pattern a "golden triangle" at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most "above the fold" result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.
This area was viewed by 100% of the 50 participants in the study.
With both organic and sponsored search results, higher ranking results were viewed more often. Here are results for organic results (percentages represent the number of study participants viewing the listing):
Organic Search Results Viewed:
Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%
Rank 3 - 100%
Rank 4 - 85%
Rank 5 - 60%
Rank 6 - 50%
Rank 7 - 50%
Rank 8 - 30%
Rank 9 - 30%
Rank 10 - 20%
A similar, though smaller triangle effect was also observed for the sponsored listings on the right side of Google search result pages. In aggregate, fewer people looked at the sponsored listings; the exception to this was then sponsored ads were served at the top of a search result page as well as on the right side of the page. Ads at the top of the page were viewed by 100% of study participants.
Sponsored Listings Viewed (right side):
Sponsored listing 1 - 50%
Sponsored listing 2 - 40%
Sponsored listing 3 - 30%
Sponsored listing 4 - 20%
Sponsored listing 5 - 10%
Sponsored listing 6 - 10%
Sponsored listing 7 - 10%
Sponsored listing 8 - 10%
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