Mouse Tracking
01 Definition
Mouse Tracking meaning: Recording cursor movement and position to infer where visitors focus attention.
Mouse tracking records how a visitor moves and pauses the cursor across a page. Teams use it to guess where attention goes and to build movement heatmaps. Cursor position is only a rough proxy for where people look, so its conclusions about attention are indirect and should be treated with caution.
Also called
Why it matters
How Mouse Tracking fits the work
Mouse movement offers a cheap, large-scale hint about where visitors focus, useful when true eye tracking is too costly or hard to run at scale.
In context
Mouse tracking showed cursors hovering near a missing size chart, hinting that shoppers looked for sizing details the product page did not provide.
Practical note
Mouse position does not equal eye gaze; the link between the two is loose, so treat movement heatmaps as suggestive signals, not proof of where people looked.