Google Browser Size: Is your content visible?

Have you ever wondered how much of your carefully designed Web page is actually visible to the people coming to your site?

Then take a look at Google Browser Size, an amazingly simple and effective tool for Web designers to see what percentage of users sees which content, like this:


Of course we all know to place important content towards the top, above the fold, we have seen the heatmaps from eye tracking studies, and we all test at different screen sizes, right? Google Browser Size, already launched back in December 2009, just makes the testing easier and brings this home with shocking immediacy (Mike Moran at Biznology).

The visualization is based on browser window sizes of people who visit Google, not on actual browser window sizes used when accessing a particular site. Depending on how closely your audience matches the average Google visitor, results may vary.

One caveat: As mentioned on the Browser Size website, the tool works best on web pages with a fixed layout aligned to the left. The visualization can be misleading for liquid or reactive pages that adjust to the available screen width, we well as centered pages.

Labels: google, seo, usability, webdevelopment