A new EyeTracking Study confirms the importance of page position and rank in both Organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through in Google.

The first phase of the study was conducted with 50 people in an eye tracking lab in San Francisco, California and presented panel participants with 5 distinct scenarios that would require the use of a search engine. Google was used as the search engine in all of the instances.

The measured organic Ranking Visibility (shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%

Rank 3 – 100%

Rank 4 – 85%

Rank 5 – 60%

Rank 6 – 50%

Rank 7 – 50%

Rank 8 – 30%

Rank 9 – 30%

Rank 10 – 20%

You can also check the full size picture

There seems to be a “F” shaped scan pattern, where the eye tends to travel vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right if something caught the participant’s attention.

What I find especially intersting is, that the top Google Adsense ad still receives 50% of the eyes, while the bottom ad get's 10 onyl…

Side sponsored ad visibility (shown is percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)

1 – 50%
2 – 40%

3 – 30%

4 – 20%

5 – 10%

6 – 10%

7 – 10%

8 – 10%

in Other words: a TOP Adwords ranking buys you a guaranted SERP at position 6 or 7…. not too bad…

but then nothing REALLY unexpected… the whole study had 50 people analysed, but the study is still going on… watch out for future results.

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