Some interesting facts about the correlation of the intention of search queries and the navigation on the serps (search engine results pages) are the result of a study accomplished at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. By eye tracking the behavior depending on the intention of search queries has been surveyed. Whereas the results are interesting, it might be necessary to point to the scientific character of the study. There have been just 58 participants and some of the elements of serps (snippets) are still innovative parts (s.a. Semantic Web is in the Early Adopter Phase).

The different intentions have been information, navigation, transaction and searching for multimedia content in the forms of images and videos. The researched issues have been the attention and the time spent with the different elements of search results, which include title, snippet, url and images. The result in part shows clear differences especially regarding the snippets, which have been most important to searching for information and transactional search queries. Regarding the latter additionally titles have been very important. Most different are the results of searches dedicated to multimedia. Because of the character of the elements this might not astonish, but it is symptomatic and contrary to the elements title and internet address usually used to optimize multimedia content for search engines. Title and url had less attention than snippets with the image being the most important part. Too, his might wonder, because of the large amount of videos provided for informational purposes.

User behavior in SERPs. Eye tracking study July 2010

Further blog articles about the use of snippets within search results:

Semantic Web is in the Early Adopter Phase

Growth of Google’s Rich Snippets Semantic Web Feature

Directory Sources: Search Engine Marketing – Search Engine Optimization – Semantic Web