Archive: January, 2007

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a study that shows that being in the Top10 is simply not good enough anymore. The paper, “Eye tracking in MSN Search: Investigating snippet length, target position and task types”, examines where MSN users look when viewing search results, and if the length of the descriptive text, or “snippets” found beneath search results influences click rates.

Assigning a series of search related tasks to six 3-person test groups, the researchers found that the test subjects, “… seem to exhibit an implicit trust for the rank generated by the search engine…”. They also found that the length of information snippets shown beneath search results effects click rates, depending on the type of task the research subject was assigned. The published report is full of stats and charts and scientific explanations but it boils down to this.

There were two types of search-task assigned to the test groups. The first was called an informational search, in which a subject was told to find something specific. The second type of search-task was called a navigational search, in which a subject is told to find their way from point A to point Z.