Eye-Tracking Study and User’s Behavior in Web Searching
Eye-tracking studies can give us a better understanding of how users treat different searching tasks. Google golden triangle (Enquiro 2005) tells us that users read more of higher rank results compared to the lower ones. Study carried out by Marcos, M. C. et al. (2010) revealed that users pay attention to elements of results differently from one searching type to another.
On the other hand, Microsoft studies (Guan, Z., & Cutrell, E. (2007), E. Cutrell, E., & Guan, Z. (2007)) shed light on the significance of navigational searching vs. other searching tasks. According to these studies, search session duration for navigational searching is the shortest.
As a comparison, search session for a navigational searching is one-third of search session duration in informational searching. Another significant characteristic of a navigational searching is for its longer URL fixation. A URL fixation is the time that a user spends to observe the URL of a result in search engine result page (SERP). Taking into account this finding, we can conclude that there is a tight dependency between navigational searching and URL of a Web page. Moreover, if we consider that based on Microsoft eye-tracking study (E. Cutrell, E., & Guan, Z. (2007)) a search snippet has less value in navigational searching compared to an informational searching, we believe It is safe to say that considering the URL information of a Web page plays a crucial part in a navigational resource identification.
Lorigo et.al (2005) conducted an eye-tracking study on the basis of different factors. This study reveals some interesting facts. According to the outcome of this eye-tracking study, a Web searching task is dependent to its type. It shows that an information searching is more than 35% longer in terms of its time span. In addition, this has been shown from results of this study that users which performed navigational searching were more likely to spend more time in SERP.
This is due to the nature of searching tasks. Since users in informational searching are seeking for a piece of information, thus they are not targeting a particular Web page. In other words, an informational query may need to be addressed within different Web pages. However, a navigational searching has a unique answer and consequently, a user seeks for that particular Web page within SERP. That is why URL fixation is longer in navigational searching. It means that a SERP with a better knowledge representation can be of more desire for users that perform a navigational searching.