Eye Tracking Studies by Google

**Shenron** · 10 February, 2009, 10:30 AM

Great post, a must read for every Webmaster.

Official Google Blog: Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

**Aquarezz** · 10 February, 2009, 10:50 AM

Pretty nice post from Google!

Great, thanks

Greetz

**elbandelero** · 10 February, 2009, 10:55 AM

You're right, it's a great post. Looking at their video, reading their analysis, and then doing a search for the same keyphrase here on my own computer I can see similar results appearing, and interestingly the page one results almost all have the exact keyphrase searched for in their page title, and the top couple of results also had it in their url.

**Will.Spencer** · 11 February, 2009, 03:58 AM

"Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results..."

That was a big surprise to me. My own eyes jumped directly to the images.

**yangyang** · 11 February, 2009, 05:03 AM

"Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results..."

That was a big surprise to me. My own eyes jumped directly to the images.

I was wondering what switching that image to a sexy blonde picture would do to the study findings.

**Mike Dammann** · 11 February, 2009, 08:44 AM

Originally Posted by yangyang

I was wondering what switching that image to a sexy blonde picture would do to the study findings.

I think we all know the answer to that one.

**Loko** · 12 February, 2009, 05:18 AM

It is very interesting indeed. I guess they need to do more research to make it more accurate, using more different groups of people. Perhaps age may be a factor or maybe there is a difference between man and woman. Also depends on the subject.
I'm very visually oriented so my eyes went to those thumbnails first too. Especially on a subject like how to tie a tie, I dont need words, just images.
Perhaps they will go to a system where the order of links and position of images depends on the subject.