Look Before you Leap...

How often do you think about where you are looking? It isn’t common for a person to analyze the exact spot they are looking at, instead our brains are meant to decipher the information we receive instantaneously into practical thoughts. Very few people think about why they are looking at a particular object. Why did your eye focus on that big red text? Why did that image direct your attention to the text below it or to the right of it? Visual queues are used throughout print media, online media, television media, and in the living world around us. We generally take these queues for granted and just take it all in.

While that’s all nice and good, how does this relate to Search Engine Optimization? It has everything to do with it. Where exactly does a user look when they do a search on Google? We all know it’s important to rank high, or on the first page, but how should our ranking be positioned? Where does the average person focus their attention when searching the web, in particular Google?

A new study conducted by Enquiro, Did-it, and Eyetools has concluded the majority of eye tracking activity occurs within a triangle located at the top left of Google’s search. They dubbed this phenomenon as the “golden triangle”. Their findings conclude it is important where the eye falls on the page since most user clicks happen pretty quickly after the search is done. The study returned interesting percentages for the number of views a ranking will receive. Rankings 1 thru 3 all see 100% of users looked at the ranking. Subsequently rank 4 showed an 85% user looks. As listings went below “the fold” (the line in which you have to scroll to see more content) the rankings dropped off in percentage of views. Rank 5 showed 60% where as ranks 6 and 7 showed 50%. Ranks 8-9 showed 30% and ranking 10 had 20% of overall views. The research concluded that the amount of eye movement declined rapidly as it passed the 4th and 5th rankings. While more research is being done and analyzed, these findings are concurrent with what the researchers expected.

As a dentist and an internet user, take a moment and step back when viewing a page, and look for those visual queues that drive your eyes around your practice’s website. Think for a second, why am I looking at this? Just as a position on a search engine is important, it is also important to guide the users coming from the search engine around your practice’s web page. If a user doesn’t find the information they are looking for, they will go directly back to the search engine to look for a website that does.