Yahoo Makes Big Customer Satisfaction Gains In Search

The Yahoo Search Blog discusses improvements in consumer satisfaction scores for Yahoo Search, according to the most recent Keynote Customer Experience Rankings of search engines. According to Keynote Systems, “Yahoo! is, indeed, achieving noticeable improvements in user experience and beginning to close the gap with Google in several key search experience drivers.” Yahoo calls out […]

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The Yahoo Search Blog discusses improvements in consumer satisfaction scores for Yahoo Search, according to the most recent Keynote Customer Experience Rankings of search engines. According to Keynote Systems, “Yahoo! is, indeed, achieving noticeable improvements in user experience and beginning to close the gap with Google in several key search experience drivers.”


Yahoo calls out a particular metric, “Search Assist & Suggestions Rankings,” where it apparently outperforms Google, based on the introduction in October of Search Assist:

Yahoo Search Blog

Source: Yahoo/Keynote Systems (2008)

However, despite significant gains by Yahoo, Google remained in the top spot across all four Keynote consumer experience and satisfaction categories:

Overall Satisfaction

Source: Keynote Systems (2008)

By comparison, in the 2007 annual University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), Yahoo outperformed Google for the first time in overall customer satisfaction:

ACSI search scores

Source: University of Mich./ForSee Results (2008)

However, amid all the improved scores there is one disconcerting note for Yahoo. In the Keynote data, Google significantly beat it in a couple areas of local search — a category that Yahoo used to own:

Task Success

Source: Keynote Systems (2008)


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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