Traditionally, we came to learn about the “Golden Triangle” or the F-shaped scanning pattern. Now, Gord Hotchkiss says that with a change to personalized search, we are seeing more of an E-Shaped pattern. Surprisingly, users did not spend too much time lookin at images and for this, Gord said,“We can determine relevance fairly quickly and if an image proves to be irrelevant, we quickly move on.”

“First, we gave participants a chance to find out more about Apple’s iPhone. We didn’t restrict their online browsing, but we did track which sites they went to and which searches they did. Then, we used this information to mock up a search results page, for a second session, where we asked them to pick up where they left off in the first session and continue to find out more about the iPhone. We showed personalized results in organic positions 3, 4 and 5, tailored to where we felt the participant was in their cycle. The rest of the results were actual Google results.

It was interesting to compare interactions in organic positions 3, 4 and 5, our test positions for the personalized results, in our personalized mock ups and the non personalized sessions. These personalized results, even though we didn’t move them up into the top two organic positions, performed remarkably well”.

Available also in a video that shows 'where the viewer’s eyes went on each page they visited. By following the clicks and understanding the eye movement patterns, we can see which content was actually read, and which areas created confusion.'

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