by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist
According to a Google-commissioned study performed by Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc, this is roughly how the human eye absorbs the information based on a first-time visit to a unique search query page. What follows is a heat map tracking a user's first viewing-- the darker the hue, the more time the eye spent on that area:
Notice that shape. It's what led to christening this pattern the Golden Triangle--a term that covers the area and order in which the eye reads and processes information. In the early days before this innovation, a big percentage of optimization was done on educated guesswork. But when the Golden Triangle was introduced at the Search Engine Strategies conference in 2005, it changed the way many designers, search engine marketers and users looked at how people use search engines.
The Golden Triangle doesn't just apply to Google—similar eye-tracking tests run against several other search engines, such as Yahoo or MSN, showed the same results:
So the big question: what does the Golden Triangle really mean? Well, it means that if your listing doesn’t fall inside that triangle, your chances of being clicked are drastically reduced, if not totally diminished. The top-three results draws 100 percent visibility, while result four gets 85 percent, and so on. Anything from result six onward has to fight for the remaining visibility of 50 percent .
Research like this gives real depth to the importance of search engine marketing, and how using Search Engine Optimization properly is key to any solid marketing plan.
Source: Eye-Tracking Study More Than Meets the Eye [Google Blog]
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