Google Looks At Itself Through Your Eyes

What captures a user's attention on their screen can play a large part in whether or not they click through to a search engine result. Naturally, that makes finding out where eyeballs go on a SERP vital to their overall search experience, and hence, vital to Google's strategy.

Google of course obtains this knowledge through extensive eye tracking research. The company has

"For the Universal Search team, this was a successful outcome. It showed that we had managed to design a subtle user interface that gives people helpful information without getting in the way of their primary task: finding relevant information," the post says.

They note that Google is conducting similar eye tracking tests with image search and Google News. They have