UX Glossary · I
Information scent
How strongly a link or label signals that following it leads toward what the user wants.
Information scent describes the cues people use to judge whether a path leads to what they are looking for. It comes from information foraging theory, developed by Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card at Xerox PARC in the 1990s, which models information seeking on how animals forage for food: follow the strongest scent, abandon a patch when the yield drops.
Why it explains so much navigation behaviour
People do not read a navigation and build a model of the site. They scan for the option that looks most likely to lead where they want, click it, and reassess. Every step either strengthens or weakens their confidence.
Weak scent produces the recognisable pattern of clicking into a section, immediately going back, and trying another, sometimes called pogosticking. It is visible in clickstream data and it almost always means labels are not doing their job.
What strengthens it
Specific labels over clever ones. “Pricing” beats “Plans and possibilities”. Words the user would use rather than internal names. Enough description at the decision point to predict what is behind the link, which is why a one-line summary under a navigation item often outperforms a redesign.
In practice
Test labels in isolation. Show someone a link and ask what they expect to find. If the answers vary widely, the scent is weak regardless of how good the structure is.