Eye Tracking Data r.e. Google Business Profile visibility in SERPs

    We can see the importance of Google Business Profile (aka Google Map) listings for many sectors such as (physical) retail and hospitality for visibility in Google search results e.g. dataforseo .com's SERP Volatility Index states that over ½ of “Dining & Nightlife” related search results on Google UK contains a local Map pack (of 3 Map listings) integrated into search results. These are searches with often an (implicit) local intent. Just because a SERP feature is prominent / visible (e.g. Google Ads), it does not mean neccessarily that people pay attention to it.

    I have looked into the evidence for the importance of Google Map results in click & eyetracking studies where subjects (using Google search engines)'s eye movement, pupil dilation, point of gaze, and blinking are observed to measure to see where they focus their visual attention, what they engage with & what they ignore . None are very recent and in some studies, the scenario contained filtered results from the search engine (where elements like ads may have been removed); but they all relate to Google post-Universal search thus are valid I would suggest:

1. In one study, Google Maps won the first click in over 40% of these location-based searches, with either the Google Map itself or one of the Local Listings being chosen rather than a ‘brand’. The reasons given for this choice included being able to see the location, seeing options and/or prices together, seeing reviews and being able to see images ... In tackling a geo-search task, they already understood that by switching to the Google Maps interface, they were able to quickly and efficiently access a much richer data set, visually – see https://www.redcmarketing.com/app/uploads/2018/10/The-Secret-Life-of-Search.pdf .

2. See the "Location searches" section of https://moz.com/blog/google-serp-layouts-searching-behavior . The "Time to First Fixation" (TTFF) metric indicates the amount of time that it takes a respondent (or all respondents on average) to look at a specific AOI (Area of Interest) from stimulus onset. AOIs are specific regions on a stimulus (like a webpage, image, or video) that researchers define to analyse eye movements & attention patterns, allowing for quantitative metrics like "dwell time" and TTFF.

This small study showed that "From the fixation data, we found that most attention was dedicated to the local listings [below the map image] rather than the map [image itself] or organic listings. This would indicate that the greater amount of detail in the local listings was more engaging." and the data showed the Map was the first place they look in these type of search results too. For the retail-related search "phone shops near me" the study showed that local listings were more engaging than the ad images above them.

     See also https://www.slideshare.net/gesterling/bericht-icomp-vol4 which comes to the same conclusion.

3.  In 2014, Mediative conducted a large study eye-tracking research studying where users look on Google’s SERP (view archived copy of study: https://web.archive.org/web/20170417085203/https://www.yext.co.uk/blog/2016/03/google-removes-ads-right-rail-local-pack-important-ever/ ) - the study showed that users tended to focus their attention in three areas:

1. Near the top of the page

2. Local search results

3. the first organic search result

  Here is a map of the clicks on a mobile local search result relating to hospitality from this study : https://imgur.com/3KXnVFp  and a quote from the aforementioned study: "In terms of where users click on Google’s SERP, several studies have concluded that organic search listings receive more than 90% of the clicks with users favouring local search results the most.”