Eye Gaze Patterns while Searching vs. Browsing a Website
http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/91/eyegaze.asp

Shrestha, Sav and Kelsi Lenz
Usability News
2007

Abstract:

This article discusses users' visual scan paths of web pages containing text and/or pictures while conducting browsing and searching tasks. User performance on three usability tasks on an e-commerce website is described. Results show that users follow a fairly uniform scan path when browsing through pictures, and a more random path while specifically searching through them. Additionally, users appeared to follow Nielsen's 'F' pattern (2006) while both browsing and searching through text-based pages.