Google’s User Experience department is sharing findings from eye-tracking studies on their search results page.

I’m all in favor of eye-tracking and other methods of usability testing that observe the subject. People can hardly ever tell why they’re doing what they’re doing, anyway.

A basic, important understanding is how people scan results;

They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query.

A nice video of eye-tracking shows you just how the user moves her eyes through the results. They’re impressed at how fast the eyes are moving, but if you know anything about saccades (the involuntary, constant moving of  our eyes that assemble vision) you’re more likely to be interested by the fact that the subjects eyes are moving slowly through the results, indicating a tight focus on the task at hand.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29DrEEsqT4&eurl=http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/eye-tracking-studies-more-than-meets.html&feature=player_embedded]

They also talk about Universal Search, where thumbnail images appear next to some results. Their test data indicates that the thumbnails are helpful – they allow users to more quickly confirm or dismiss a result as relevant.