Google slays Yahoo!, tops for search satisfaction

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 03:37

Your IT - Home IT

Google is the most popular search engine by a mile. In a market where loyalties can change in an instant, it should come as no surprise that the company is way out in front on customer satisfaction too. Meanwhile nearest rival Yahoo! is stuck in an increasingly distant second place.

Google accounts for just over 70 percent of US web searches, according to recent figures from web measurement firm Hitwise. Hot on the heels of that finding comes a stellar performance by the search giant in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

The ACSI is compiled by the University of Michigan's National Quality Research Centre in partnership with the American Society for Quality and CFI Group.

Since Google made its ACSI debut in 2002, there has only been one year that it didn't lead the Internet portals/search engines industry category. But Google is back with a bang after being narrowly squeezed out by Yahoo! in 2007, recording a score of 86.

Yahoo!'s score fell by 2.5 percent to 77.

ACSI officials said the 6.7 percent surge in the sector's overall score was largely due to Google's "unparalleled" 10.3 percent improvement.

A score of 86 is hitherto unknown in this category. The previous high score was 82, achieved by Google in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

So that's Google and Yahoo! taken care of, but how did Microsoft fare? Find out on page two.