Looking for query terms on search engine results pages

Abstract

Understanding the behaviors people employ when using a search system is important for developing systems that better serve users. More detailed knowledge of where searchers focus their visual attention is important to understanding how searchers use search results lists when reformulating queries. While observation of visual scanning has been used in the study of relevance judgments, to our knowledge the study reported here is the first to investigate visual attention to query terms. The study presented in this paper utilized eye-tracking to investigate the frequency with which people looked at (fixated on) their query terms when the terms appeared on search engine results pages. Results show that people fixated on some of the displayed query terms; however, they fixated on other words and parts of the page more frequently.