Where People Look When Scanning Search Results for Attorney Websites

Just about every business vies for the top spots in search engine results. They want their website listed in the top 10, but is that really where Internet searchers look when scanning the search engine results? Google’s User Experience Research team wanted to find out the answer to this question and conducted various eye-tracking studies.

According to the Google team, people evaluate the search results page so rapidly that most of their decisions are made unconsciously.  Researchers used eye-tracking equipment to gain more insight into the fast decision-making process.  While you can never read someone’s mind, by tracking where this person is looking, you can get a general idea of what he or she is thinking about.

After conducting various studies, the Google team reached the conclusion that people have a propensity to scan search results in order.  They would begin at the first result listed and continue down the screen until they were able to find a result that appeared to have the information they wanted. 

Researchers also wanted to find out if thumbnail images made a difference when people were searching online.  In Google’s own words, “the thumbnail image seemed to make results with thumbnails easy to notice when the users wanted them and the thumbnails also seemed to make it easy for people to skip over the results with thumbnails when those results were not relevant to their search.”

So, to answer the original question posed in this blog post, people tend to spend more time scanning the top search results.  That means it is worth the time and effort to create an effective attorney Internet marketing campaign.