A recent eye-tracking usability study indicates that users ignore real-time results in searches. How users use search is, well, weird science. We’ve known for some time, for example, that a typical user will click within 10 seconds (.pdf; 172KB) of the search results being displayed. Users make nearly instantaneous decisions in about one-tenth of a second (the time it takes to fixate).
What’s especially interesting about Oneupweb’s study is that the majority of the participants were active on at least one social media network, so would presumably be predisposed to real-time search results. Both groups of participants—Oneupweb recruited two sets of participants, “consumers” and “information foragers”—fixated on the top results in, on average, under 2 seconds. The participants took, again on average, more than 10 seconds to fixate on the real-time results (“consumers” took 9 seconds; “information foragers” took 14 seconds). More importantly, “consumers” clicked 10% fewer times on the real-time results than the “information foragers.”
Only 25% of the “consumer” participants and 47% of the “information forager” participants liked the real-time results; the majority were “indifferent” to the real-time results. From the Oneupweb study: “What the data showed, and the participants confirmed, was that the links that were likely to get clicks need to appear credible and relevant. And users do trust Google’s top rankings to be the most relevant to their search query.” The study confirms that content placement on a page is a primary predictor of attention. No surprises there. But Oneupweb’s assessment of the study results indicates a Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle search paradox: “... as social inputs increase, the relevancy of top ranked search results becomes less predictable.”
This is potentially really bad news for the search engines. Google and Bing have both cut deals—reported to be US$15 million and US$10 million respectively—with Twitter for real-time search results. Chump change for Google and Microsoft, but real money for Twitter.
Dave Winer pegs precisely why we ignore real-time results:
“It’s impossible to convey much information in 140 characters. So when a search hits a tweet you get at most a soundbite, telling you something you probably already knew. When you search you’re looking for information you don’t have but want.”
