Microsoft released the results of an eye-tracking study focusing on the impact of search ranking, and more provocatively among industry experts, the impact of informational snippet length on user task performance. The early (and already debated) conclusion is that 1. a top 5 rank, not top 10, is crucial; 2. snippet length has a direct impact on search success.
report (PDF):
We found that as we increased the length of the query-dependent contextual snippet in search results, performance improved for informational queries, while it degraded for navigational queries.
In plain English, longer snippets significantly improved the searcher's ability to find what they were looking for with informational tasks (i.e., average June temperature in Caracas). But when navigating for specific sites, longer snippets cluttered up the way.
Our eye tracking results suggest this difference in performance was due to the fact that as the snippet length increased, users paid more attention to the snippet and less attention to the URL located at the bottom of the search result.
Other findings:
1. Users scan four results regardless of where the best listing is (Though we also know from top listings are inherently trusted more, and it appears searchers consider results in couplets - one and two together, eliminating one, usually the second, and then skipping to three and four, suggesting odd-number results are superior to even-numbered results). 2. Users scanned more results when the best listing was moved further down the page, regardless of snippet length, indicating users know at a glance if the result is the correct one. 3. Users look farther down the list for navigational queries than for informational queries. 4. Users expect to find their desired information in the top five results (Other reports have supported that results appearing results 9 and 10 are pretty much SOL.Over at Sullivan also echoed Microsoft researchers suggestion that, for navigational searches, URLs should be placed above the descriptions. The question of the snippet, though, remains somewhat controversial. The authors of the study readily admitted that with longer snippets, fewer results are shown on a page. Plus, search engines would need to improve dramatically at distinguishing between an informational and a navigational query to better serve the intent of the searcher. This is where Enquiro's
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