Where to put the Search Box

What colors to use and what's the average search per site user?

[Erku]

Hi,

I have a content site and am getting fair amount of traffic.

Are there any stats as to where put the search box and what colors to use to achieve the maximum amount of searches per user.

Are there any stats as to how many searches one thousand users may do?

Thank you

[limbo]

Hi erkdu

There are some pretty good studies around page layout and the correlation between element position & hit frequency - the adsense program supplies some nice diagrams that might help - have a rummage in their help pages.

Other searches for you might include a fairly recent study into eye movement over a web page - i think it's called eye tracker.

From a personal point of view - I tend to place the search box top right inside a nice graphic. I figure it should be prominent and available to use one every page of the site - intrinsic to navigation, as it were.

[Erku]

Limbo,

Thank you very much. I will look into them. Great remarks.

[Ric_Raftis]

There appears to be a bit of a standard developing amongst designers to put the search box at top right of the site. It seems to be happening more and more just like the site logo is an anchor back to the home page.

As standards like this develop, albeit pseudo, it tends to educate users to look there and if they don't find it they get confused.

Regards,

Ric