User Behavior Understood by Google

Are actual field tests, observing users in the wild, necessary? Googles Search Quality Uber Tech Lead, Daniel Russell, explains why:

people are masters of saying one thing and doing another, particularly when it comes to nearly automatic behavior. We find that searchers often turn so quickly to Google that they dont really think too much about what theyre actually searching for.

Its surprising, but often well see people trying to find out something about a topic, but then never actually mention the topic itself. That is, theres often a big discrepancy between what theyll tell me (the human observer) theyre trying to do, and the search terms they enter into Google. One person I shadowed for the day spent ten minutes trying to find the schedule of the ferry that runs between San Francisco and Larkspur, but somehow only thought of adding the word ferry much later in their search. . . .

Memories of your own behavior are also notoriously unreliable. Peoples search behavior in the lab is often different than when theyre at home or at work. This is a natural (and expected) side effect of lab studies: people will work especially hard to please a researcher.

If we ask them to search for a pair of brown shoes theyd like to buy for themselves, in the lab theyll find the first pair that seems reasonable and then stop, satisfied. If it was real, they would go on and spend more time. We still do lab studies, but we know what to watch for, and what to ignore.

Not the most heartening observation of human intelligence Ive ever heard

Anyway, Google also uses tools like eyetracking in this example (the red dot indicates the users gaze):

Google also puts this data to use, such as in the overhaul of their Advanced Search page.

What do you do to learn more about how your users interact with your site?

Included links: Google Field Study

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