Eye-Tracking & Universal Search

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing

Anyone who has spent any time comparing the value of Organic Results vs Pay-Per-Click has probably seen a copy of an Eye-Tracking or Heat Map Study.  They are very effective at conveying just how much more important it is to have your site show up in the organic results.    Here is an example:

I use this image or one like it a lot when I meet with prospective clients who aren’t sure whether they should invest in a better website or more pay-per-click.

But what this heat map doesn’t show is what happens when a search is done that returns results in Google’s “Universal Search” format.  For who don’t know, Universal Search refers to Search Engine Results Pages that come back showing a mix of text links, images, videos, local results, etc.

I recently read a blog post put out by Google that shows some incredible changes to the way people looks at results within UNIVERSAL SEARCH.

Put simply, when a SERP pages is broken up with Images and Videos, the tradional heat map is no longer valid.  Pictures and Videos grab people’s attention, and their eyeballs will jump to those spots on the page and will then move up and down from there, often times in an “E” like pattern.

And it makes sense that this is so.  On a page of mostly text, it only makes sense that a person’s eyes would naturally fix on the thumbnail images.  They are different, so they stick out.

I think is another example of why it is so important to consider adding video to websites.  If there is ANY chance that your video will show up in a search, then you can only benefit from it.

That being said, I also imagine that over time this advantage will dissipate.   Right now, videos on attorney websites are still rare, and properly hosted one rarer still.  But in a few years they will be commonplace, and just having a video won’t be much of an advantage.

Still, there is always an advantage at being a “first-mover”, particularly in this age of the Internet.

A few of my clients recently launced video on their websites.  I think they are great examples of quality videos for attorney websites.

Dan Hanlon Video

Mark Davis Video

Mark Baer Video

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