Leading Western search engines recently started displaying Twitter messages in search results.
But do users notice other real-time data on the results page? To clarify, by “real-time data” we mean social media (blog post) search results displayed after the regular results. OneUpWeb has researched the question.
44 respondents (aged 18 to 50) were divided into two groups: “information seekers” and “buyers”. The first group was tasked with finding information about a product. The second — finding a product they plan to buy.
Researchers carefully watched user search behaviour. They produced respondent movement maps showing that few “information seekers” ever reached the real-time results located at the bottom of the search page.
Study findings:
- 73% of respondents had not heard of real-time messages before the study;
- real-time messages interested only a quarter of “buyers” and nearly half of “information seekers”;
- real-time message search results turned out to be unnecessary and uninteresting to most respondents.
The bottom line: this search engine innovation is unpopular among ordinary users — primarily because people don’t understand the point.
