What Searchers Think When Looking at Results

What are searchers thinking when they stare down a list of search results? Actually, the first thing to keep in mind is that searchers don't stare at search results. They don't even read them. They scan them. They quickly skim the page hunting for the word they typed into the search box, along with a few other words they're thinking but didn't bother typing.

And they do it quickly. Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of less than six. Regardless of the exact amount of time spent, searchers are sizing up the results rapidly.

To see what searchers are seeing, Enquiro conducted an eye tracking study that recorded eye movements (and clicks) and created graphs that corresponded to where searchers looked on the screen and what they "fixated" on. This
One reason that searchers spend so little time on the search results page is that they click choose information that is easier to get even when it is of lower quality (a basic principle of
Most Internet searchers look only at the first page of search results-the top of the first page at that. But Jarvis Mak, Director at Nielsen/NetRatings, notes that as searchers do more and more searches within a session they are far more likely to look at a second page of search results, perhaps even a third page. These are the distinct minority of searches, but it does show that when searchers are intently searching for something they use more queries and view more results pages.

Within each search result, Internet searchers spend 43 percent of the time viewing the snippet (the multi-line description under the title), followed by 30 percent reviewing the title itself, according to that same Comments

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