When the Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes had his epiphany one spring morning of 1951; for an invention his colleagues would later tease him of being irrelevant, he had absolutely had no idea it would improve businesses in a medium that was yet to be even created, the internet.
When the Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes had his epiphany one spring morning of 1951; for an invention his colleagues would later tease him of being irrelevant, he had absolutely had no idea it would improve businesses in a medium that was yet to be even created, the internet.
His invention of the laser, which is an acronym of "light amplification by stimulated emissions of radiation", is known for among other things creating precision. From industrial cutting machines to sniper sights mounted on assassins' rifles, laser is used for accuracy. Five decades into the invention and only one into internet business, this technology is being used in eye tracking experiments to map out precisely how surfers visually engage web content. Such intimate knowledge of surfers' behavior provides internet marketers with basis of optimizing web content both for visitor experience and conversions.
Eye tracking uses laser technology mounted behind the monitor screen that traces where the eye pays attention. As a result, a phenomenon called "The Golden Triangle" which particularly applies to Search Engines (SE) has been noted. This triangle stars from the upper left corner of the webpage just below the logo, across
the top-width about two thirds of the page towards the right. It then cuts diagonally and downwards through the page towards the left, slightly past the page fold. Finally, vertically up the left of the page to where it started from create a triangle.
This "Golden Triangle" agrees with the more school of hard-knocks "Google Heat Map" that was mapped for Adsense publishers by Google from actual clicking patterns of surfers. It is used to optimize Adsense adverts placement. In both maps, the upper left corner of a webpage is identified as prime real-estate; surfers pay the most attention to this area.
This has great implications in SE based marketing. In essence the laser eye-tracking shows that people search organic or natural listings in a SE ranking page many more times than they do for Pay per Click (PPC) listings in the same SE ranking page. This is because the PPCs listings are on the complete right-hand side of the page.
This then translates to mean that you get much more traffic by getting high placement on natural listings than getting high placement n PPCs. For internet businesses lethargic to search engine optimisation, this is proof they are leaving a whole lot of bargain on the table.
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