Proceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management

To determine key factors that affect a user's behavior with search results, we conducted a controlled eye-tracking study of users completing search tasks using both desktop and mobile devices. We focus our investigation on users' behavior from their query to the first action they take with the search engine results page (SERP): either a click on a search result or a reformulation of their query. We found that a user deciding to reformulate a query rather than click on a result is best understood as being caused by the user's examination pattern not including a relevant search result. If a user sees a relevant result, they are very likely to click it. Of note, users do not look at all search results and their…

• UO
  University of Waterloo
• NS
  Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

  Awards: RGPIN-, RGPIN-2014, RGPIN-2014-0, RGPIN-201, CRDPJ 468812-14, RGPIN, CRDPJ, RGPIN-2014-03642, RGPIN-2014-03