An Eye Tracking Study: Are AI Overviews Changing Search Behavior?
sigir26-006 · Full research paper · Sara Fahad Dawood Al Lawati, Dana McKay, Mark Sanderson, Paul Thomas, Johanne R. Trippas
User Behavior and Search Interaction · 100%
Abstract
We conduct a lab eye-tracking study to examine how users interact with search engines that place Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) results above traditionally ranked search results, also known as "ten blue links", and we use an engagement scale to evaluate their experience. Our aim is to study how users interact with search engine interfaces that incorporate GenAI content, assess users' willingness to scroll past GenAI content to view the traditional search results, and explore how these interactions differ from existing literature on scanning search engine result pages. % We show that GenAI content is changing how people search, but the "golden triangle" remains valid, where the top-left section of the search page attracts the most attention. Searchers are still engaging with the blue links in patterns consistent with the literature; however, they engage significantly more with GenAI content. Finally, we outline future directions to deepen our understanding of search behavior in the era of GenAI.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vuong Thanh Tung | 72 | 100 Understanding user behavior in naturalistic information search tasks (2019) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Associating cognitive abilities with naturalistic search behavior (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Naturalistic Digital Behavior Predicts Cognitive Abilities (2024) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 2 | Fan Zhang 0053 | 59 | 100 Constructing Better Evaluation Metrics by Incorporating the Anchoring Effect into the User Model (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Evaluating Web Search with a Bejeweled Player Model (2017) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Models Versus Satisfaction: Towards a Better Understanding of Evaluation Metrics (2020) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Ziyi Ye | 45 |
Area-chair candidates (7)
| Ziyi Ye assigned | 45 | 14 papers | |
| Zhijing Wu 0001 COI: co-author | 34 | 9 papers | |
| Fernando Diaz 0001 | 27 | 12 papers | |
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 | 25 | 15 papers | |
| Jun Xu 0001 | 25 | 2 papers | |
| Chenyan Xiong | 24 | 15 papers | |
| Xiaoxue Zang | 23 | 4 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jiqun Liu | 81 | 3 | 100 Characterizing the Stages of Complex Tasks (2019) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 State-Aware Meta-Evaluation of Evaluation Metrics in Interactive Information Retrieval (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 2 | Sara Allawati COI: author | 72 | 3 | 100 From Lab to Reality: An Eye-tracking Study of How Users are Influenced to Search in the Era of GenAI (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 What do Users Really Ask Large Language Models? An Initial Log Analysis of Google Bard Interactions in the Wild (2024) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 3 | Vuong Thanh Tung assigned | 72 | 3 | 100 Understanding user behavior in naturalistic information search tasks (2019) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Associating cognitive abilities with naturalistic search behavior (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 4 | Fan Zhang 0053 assigned | 59 | 3 | 100 Constructing Better Evaluation Metrics by Incorporating the Anchoring Effect into the User Model (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Evaluating Web Search with a Bejeweled Player Model (2017) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 5 | Jaime Arguello | 47 | 3 | 100 Goal-setting in support of learning during search: An exploration of learning outcomes and searcher perceptions (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 Learning assessments in search-as-learning: A survey of prior work and opportunities for future research (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 7 | Romain Deffayet | 43 | 3 | 100 Evaluating the Robustness of Click Models to Policy Distributional Shift (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction 100 An Offline Metric for the Debiasedness of Click Models (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 8 | Mark D. Smucker | 39 | 3 | 68 Time-based calibration of effectiveness measures (2012) User Behavior and Search Interaction 68 IR Evaluation: Modeling User Behavior for Measuring Effectiveness (2015) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 9 | Falk Scholer COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 64 Can Users Predict Relative Query Effectiveness? (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction 64 Classifying Term Variants in Query Formulation (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 10 | Saber Zerhoudi COI: co-author | 37 | 3 | 72 From SERPs to Agents: A Platform for Comparative Studies of Information Interaction (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction 72 Beyond the Click: A Framework for Inferring Cognitive Traces in Search (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 11 | Xuanhui Wang | 36 | 3 | 100 Cross-Positional Attention for Debiasing Clicks (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction 62 Learning with Sparse and Biased Feedback for Personal Search (2018) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 12 | Paul Thomas 0001 COI: author | 36 | 3 | 100 Third Workshop on Building towards Information Interaction and Retrieval Resources Re-use (BIIRRR 2022) (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction 68 User Models, Metrics and Measures of Search: A Tutorial on the C/W/L Evaluation Framework (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 14 | Leif Azzopardi COI: co-author | 33 | 3 | 68 User Models, Metrics and Measures of Search: A Tutorial on the C/W/L Evaluation Framework (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction 64 Query quality: user ratings and system predictions (2010) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 15 | Tetsuya Sakai | 30 | 3 | 36 Diversified search evaluation: lessons from the NTCIR-9 INTENT task (2013) Evaluation Metrics and User Models 36 Summary of the NTCIR-10 INTENT-2 task: subtopic mining and search result diversification (2013) Evaluation Metrics and User Models |
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| 16 | Shuaiqiang Wang | 29 | 3 | 61 RankExpert: A Mixture of Textual-and-Behavioral Experts for Multi-Objective Learning-to-Rank in Web Search (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 61 M2oERank: Multi-Objective Mixture-of-Experts Enhanced Ranking for Satisfaction-Oriented Web Search (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 17 | Yujia Zhou 0002 | 29 | 3 | 62 Intent-Oriented Dynamic Interest Modeling for Personalized Web Search (2024) User Behavior and Search Interaction 62 Incorporating Explicit Subtopics in Personalized Search (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 18 | Zhen Qin 0001 | 29 | 3 | 62 Cross-Positional Attention for Debiasing Clicks (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction 62 Revisiting Two-tower Models for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction |
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| 20 | Idan Szpektor | 27 | 3 | 100 Predicting web searcher satisfaction with existing community-based answers (2011) User Behavior and Search Interaction 33 Identifying Web Queries with Question Intent (2016) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval |
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| 21 | Yuta Saito | 26 | 3 | 31 Long-term Off-Policy Evaluation and Learning (2024) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 31 Counterfactual Evaluation and Learning for Interactive Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2022) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 22 | Gustavo Penha | 26 | 3 | 62 As It Was: Aligning LLM Search Evaluation with Historical User Preferences (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction 29 Contextualizing Spotify's Audiobook List Recommendations with Descriptive Shelves (2025) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 23 | Bo Peng 0009 | 26 | 3 | 65 SWaT: Statistical Modeling of Video Watch Time through User Behavior Analysis (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 23 eCeLLM: Generalizing Large Language Models for E-commerce from Large-scale, High-quality Instruction Data (2024) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 24 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 26 | 3 | 31 Counterfactual Reward Modification for Streaming Recommendation with Delayed Feedback (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 31 HyperBandit: Contextual Bandit with Hypernewtork for Time-Varying User Preferences in Streaming Recommendation (2023) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 25 | Negar Arabzadeh | 25 | 3 | 32 Query Performance Prediction: From Ad-hoc to Conversational Search (2023) Query Performance Prediction 28 Estimating Query Performance Through Rich Contextualized Query Representations (2024) Query Performance Prediction |
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| 26 | Yifan Wang 0017 | 25 | 3 | 72 User Perception of Recommendation Explanation: Are Your Explanations What Users Need? (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction 24 Unbiased Delayed Feedback Label Correction for Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 27 | Yong Li 0004 | 25 | 3 | 100 Towards an Inclusive Mobile Web: A Dataset and Framework for Focusability in UI Accessibility (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 26 ProBench: Benchmarking GUI Agents with Accurate Process Information (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |
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| 30 | Yang Song 0008 | 25 | 3 | 64 Query-Less: Predicting Task Repetition for NextGen Proactive Search and Recommendation Engines (2016) User Behavior and Search Interaction 30 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval |
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| 31 | Jialong Wu 0007 | 25 | 3 | 29 OmniThink: Expanding Knowledge Boundaries in Machine Writing through Thinking (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation 28 Nested Browser-Use Learning for Agentic Information Seeking (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation |
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| 32 | Tingyu Song | 24 | 3 | 61 IFIR: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Instruction-Following in Expert-Domain Information Retrieval (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 20 Rethinking Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval: Evaluating and Advancing Retrievers in Agentic Search Systems (2026) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 33 | Zechun Niu | 24 | 3 | 26 Investigating the Robustness of Counterfactual Learning to Rank Models: A Reproducibility Study (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 24 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 34 | Sunhao Dai | 24 | 3 | 72 NExT-Search: Rebuilding User Feedback Ecosystem for Generative AI Search (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 31 AdaO2B: Adaptive Online to Batch Conversion for Out-of-Distribution Generalization (2025) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 35 | Theresia Veronika Rampisela | 24 | 3 | 24 Measuring Individual User Fairness with User Similarity and Effectiveness Disparity (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 24 Relevance-aware Individual Item Fairness Measures for Recommender Systems: Limitations and Usage Guidelines (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |