Insights - Google Researching Own Search Page

Over on the Official Google blog is a very interesting article with a not so exciting title.

The Art of the field study

Why is this article a great read for any Internet marketer or eCommerce merchant?

Any insight into how Google optimises it’s own pages to reduce bounce rate and increase the stickyness of a single page, is good insight.

One great nugget of information in the article is…

“We find that searchers often turn so quickly to Google that they don’t really think too much about what they’re actually searching for. It’s surprising, but often we’ll see people trying to find out something about a topic, but then never actually mention the topic itself. That is, there’s often a big discrepancy between what they’ll tell me (the human observer) they’re trying to do, and the search terms they enter into Google”.

Google uses advanced research methods to determin how people find the information they are looking for on the Internet in the Google search engine.  One method is shown in the video below.

The video, provided by Google shows eye tracking on a typical search page and how people go about making the decision to click on a particular result in miliseconds. It is a methodical process and seems to indicate people are very quick in the decision making process when landing on a search page.

The article goes on to detail how Google has changed its own “Advanced Search” page in an effort to reduce the “bounce rate” on this essential Google search page.

Reading the “Official Google blog” is a good idea for anyone interested in learning how the experts of search improve upon the considerable knowlege base they already have accumulated.

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