A recent study published by The American Customer Satisfaction Index indicates that Yahoo is actually the most satisfying search engine in the US.
The results follow a study which measures overall satisfaction in many industries based on consumer interviews.
In addition to Yahoo being considered the most satisfying, Google dropped by almost 4%. But despite this drop, Google continues to be the most used search engine.
So the question becomes: Why is Google the most used engine? If people are more satisfied with Yahoo shouldn't that translate into increased usage?
Before I discuss the results, let me explain how the results were obtained.
According to the ASCI website: "The American Customer Satisfaction Index uses customer interviews as input to a multi-equation econometric model developed at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "
They also use various indices to determine the final result including:
- Customer Expectations
- Perceived Quality
- Perceived Value
- Customer Complaints, and
- Customer Loyalty
To determine the engine's overall satisfaction level. Ultimately the engine that receives the highest score in these areas is considered the most satisfactory.
So let us take a look at these factors to see what, if any, ideas we can come up with as to why Yahoo is considered to be more satisfactory than Google.
Customer Expectations - This could mean a lot of things but the website says that this is a "measure of the customer's anticipation of the quality of a company's products or services."
So does that mean that people expect more out of Google and are ultimately more disappointed? Well I think it is actually a combination of having higher expectations from Google along with having lower expectations from Yahoo. Ultimately users are surprised at the value of information received by Yahoo (in my opinion).
Perceived Quality - Perceived quality is basically a measurement which looks at how the engine did in meeting the expected quality level of the user. In other words, did the engine deliver the quality of results that the user expected? Again I think the results indicate that users were both slightly disappointed with Google results while slightly more surprised at the quality of Yahoo results.
Personally I have to say that the Google of a couple years ago delivered results better for me than it does now. Granted there was a fair bit of spam in the engine, but I found the more specific the query, the better the results. Now specific results do not return near the quality of results in my opinion.
Customer Complaints - The study measured how many complaints were registered as a percentage of all use for this metric. Here I think the engines probably came out pretty evenly. I'd have to say that in my experience with both Yahoo and Google, I'm unhappy with the results an equal number of times on both engines.
Customer Loyalty - This refers to how likely the customer is to purchase or re-purchase from a service, based on the customer's own input. In terms of search I assume this refers to how likely the user is to re-use the engine. According to the study "Customer loyalty is the critical component of the model as it stands as a proxy for profitability."
This is most likely where Yahoo won the challenge.
You see, I've been hearing a lot of rumblings from non-SEO types about how disappointed they are with the Google results. And, a lot of the time, until you point out an alternative to them (such as Yahoo, or Ask or MSN) they will continue to use Google. They just assume there is nothing else out there.
But once they try another engine they realize that there are alternatives.
And this is why I think Yahoo beat Google here - because the average searcher is becoming disenfranchised with Google. While Google was the best engine, people are starting to realize that it is just one of many.
But what does it all mean?
Well there are a couple take-aways for Google here.
For one, perhaps incremental updates without much fanfare are actually hurting them.
Think about it. When is the last time you've seen a Google TV commercial? Now how about Yahoo, MSN or Ask? Perhaps Google does in fact have superior search technology, but if they don't toot their own horn, who's to say they do?
After all MSN has made great increases in it's user base and I can almost guarantee that a lot has to do with their PR campaign.
The other take-away for Google is that they cannot rest on their laurels. While their core is search they need to find more services they can build around it.
And they have been doing that - Gmail and Google Docs are just 2 examples of the products which are built around search. But finding and signing up for these services has been tricky up until recently.
With Yahoo and MSN, however, they have a host of services that aren't built around search but are services people want, and can easily find and sign up for.
If I was Google I wouldn't shrug my shoulders at this study. Because I think it brings to light a larger issue - that switching engines is just as easy as changing channels on your TV. If they don't stem the flow, pretty soon Google will be the #2 engine.