Search Engines Duke It Out For Top Spot
A recent study by Keynote Systems reports that Google isn’t as far ahead in the search engine race as everyone thought. The study surveyed 2,000 consumers on the performance of Lycos, Yahoo Search, Google and Ask Jeeves and found that though Google is still ahead of the game, Yahoo Search and MSN are close on its tail.
MSN’s decision to separate sponsored results lead them to better ratings since the last survey: 47% of users considered the engine “very useful,” versus 37% previously. And Yahoo’s introduction of local search last year was, by this measure, a great success: they were tied with Google in terms of quality and ranking of local search.
But don’t think that just because they like the product, users are brand-loyal with this stuff: 50% of those polled said they’d use another search engine if they didn’t get the results they wanted.
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Reprinted by permission of ADBUMB, Inc.
