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

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:

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:

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:

Source: Keynote Systems (2008)