Google Uses Eye Tracking to Test its Revamped Design
As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But even the most successful websites need a reassessment every now and again to stay ahead of the game. A few days ago, Google introduced it’s latest changes, the eighth iteration of the world’s most popular site. Well, that may not be true anymore actually, as Facebook recently edged Google out of the most visited spot in the United States. Even so, the second most visited spot in the US isn’t a bad place to be, but when you’re used to being number one, it’s not a surprise that Google thought it time to make a few changes. Of course, we were happy to read that they used Eye Tracking when designing their latest fix.
There has been an interesting debate taking place in the search engine world, and a few other relevant sites (like Facebook , Twitter, and Microsoft’s Bing) are harping on Google’s ranking formula, saying that their search function, which is based on relevance ranking, is outdated. According to them, the future lay in an integration of ranking by relevance and real-time search, a system that we see more and more of.
It seems that Google has finally agreed, as they announced last December, that they would begin indexing in real time to help users make sense of, as a Bloomberg article on the subject puts it, “the cacophony emanating from social media.”
Cacophony is really the right word, isn’t it? President Obama recently announced in a commencement speech that, in essence, the Internet can be a very distracting place, and that it’s going to take a lot of concentration and discipline in order to reclaim the infinite flux of information as freedom.
Google’s new way of searching now includes results with an extra column of tools where web surfers can delve deeper into information they’re after. Queries can be quickly refined to display only the latest results on news, videos, and shopping, for example.
As for the actual design on the page, there are some changes, with Google placing a colorful set of icons on the left-hand side that can narrow and specialize your search without having to go further into a separate “advanced search” page as before. Eye tracking came into play when their researchers commonly observed study participants searching across webpages in an “F-pattern,” something we’ve talked about at Eye Tracking Update before. Google’s researchers equipped their subjects with eye tracking devices and viewed the subjects through a two-way mirror while they ran through various incarnations of the new pages.
Swing by Google’s new site to see what they’ve done – but a warning – don’t expect it too look much different than what you’re used to. The engineering and algorithms might be wildly different and complex, but the familiar, simplistic interface is still there, and the changes are subtle. And, well, that’s the beauty of Google. The fixes are clean enough to where you may not have noticed it was broken in the first place.
Google Taps Eye Tracking, ‘Dogfooding’ in Overhaul
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