Where Do People Look When Searching Google Maps?
This is just a quick pointer to an article I wrote on Search Engine Land a couple days ago: Eye-Tracking In Google Maps: Study Shows Value Of No. 1 Ranking & Social Content. It covers an eye-tracking and click-tracking study of Google Maps users doing local business searches. In a nutshell, the results show that being the first business listed gets you a lot of attention (as you’d expect), but in some cases lower results can get a lot of attention if they have better content — review snippets, ratings, and so forth.The eye-tracking study was a very small sample group, but I suspect the results would be pretty similar for a larger group, too.
This is an interesting study as we are finding more and more that companies which may be a few positions down the SERP result with A Five Star rating is converting more traffic than non rated firms ranking higher. i guess this confirms what we are seeing. Sounds like Reputation Management may be a contributing factor to ranking as well.
This reminds me of 1st page ranking on google. The numbers say after 3rd or so position you might be better off at the bottom of the page (say 9th or 10th) becuase of the way people track the page.