Google knows where your eyeballs go

On a recent trip to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., I got a quick peek at one of the test rooms Google uses to track user interactions with its products. Gmail's product manager Todd Jackson told me it was just one of the many other user testing facilities the company had, and that collectively the testing had given the team important feedback of how people were using Gmail. Enough to change where entire features like user chat took up residence on a user's screen.

This Friday Google unveiled results from using this technique on some of its other products. In this case it's the results page from Google.com, the company's most heavily trafficked property. Unsurprisingly most people only care about what's on the top of the page, but what's really interesting is this video the company has put out that shows where one user's eyeballs are going and when:

What I found really neat though was that the mouse lagged far behind whatever the user's eyeballs were doing. We all do this, it's just fascinating to see it in action.

Anne Aula and Kerry Rodden, two of Google's user experience researchers, say this tracking technique led to the inclusion of thumbnails for photos and videos in search results. They also say that this actually made the page easier to parse without people getting confused. There are some before-and-after shots of what people looked at on this page. It's definitely worth checking out if you want to know where Google thinks your eyeballs will go too.

[nasserd]

Yawn. There is NOTHING new about this technique. Usability and UX researchers have been using this approach for at least a decade. What's the news... that Google uses it, too?!

[nasserd]

Oh... and it's convenient how there's no mention of how people's eyes usually go ("trained") to where the "stuff" is. Remember the scrolling text or hyperactive Flash banner ads? Those would capture more eyeballs than the desired contents on sites... which is why they proliferated so much when they were "discovered." Heck, graphic banner ads had higher click-thru rates than text-based ads.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

We just can't make you happy today can we?

[nasserd]

Unfortunately, nope. The tone makes it appear newsworthy, even though plenty of ink was spent 10-12 years ago both introducing and subsequently disqualifying the technique's reliability.

The video shows that eyeballs go where the content is; not that the content is positioned intuitively. The results are contingent on the canvas size (full-screen) and dimension (widescreen)... so it comes down to training the eyes, not learning how the eyes work.

[BlitzBoy1120]

@ Josh

Apparently not. Although this is not very new, its something Google's doing. If you don't want to read it again, simply don't click to read the article, thus avoiding a negative responses.

..People these days

[CristGarage]

So do they KNOW, or do they THINK they know?

[EddiePants]

For me; this is not correct. I usually start with the bottom left for results. This allows me to skip ads and go directly to search results #2 or #3. However this is usually based on previously executed searchs around the same topic. Not sure if I would follow the sublinks; like the eye ball did in the video unless its for a specific search (which certainly wouldn't be on how to tie a tie[is that even right?]).

[NutMac]

Oh come on guys. If Google does it, even if someone else did it before, it is newsworthy. (Apple is another example.)

[anandvvn]

Tracking eye balls is ok, but what about the user's reaction to what he/she sees? Usually I don't click the links, I look through the results and then click thte link, at times it so happens that you get the appropriate seach result in say 2 or 3 or page, or you may get a irrelevant result. The side ads that appear on search results are distracting at times, becuase they contain the keyword, but the link is totally irrelevant. They should be doing something about that, I mean put those ads, but make sure it is not distracting like make is less distracting, or making them a 1 font size smaller than the search result, or may be a different font color which is not distracting and yet visible

[mkeswani]

it's all the little pieces coming together. google is getting face recognition. local gps thing. eye movement.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL. HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[van_Zeller]

Interesting to notice that the user depicted does not use tabs... I generally open the first 5 or so link on new tabs, then proceed to the images and open some 4 more. Then I start sifting through my picks, often without ever reading all the tabs.

[pblunden]

Eye-tracking can add real value to UX research and at Foviance we use it a lot. However we have just developed a method for combining eye tracking with EEG (electroencephalography) that even furthers the learnings. We can now establish not only where people are looking but also their emotional response to what they see.
Even with this richer information we still find it necessary to combine qualitative data with quantitative in order to get statistical significance in the results.