Jun
25
Our latest survey asked 100 people if they would consider switching back to Yahoo! search engine with the departure of Terry Semel. We also asked what their current top search engine choice was.
Google dominated our survey. 90% of respondents used Google as their primary search engine. 6% used Yahoo! and 2% used MSN. 0% used Ask.com. The commentary on the CEO change at Yahoo! was the most interesting part of our survey and we believe the commentary is useful consumer feedback for Yahoo!.
Comments we received from our survey included the following:
“Yahoo! used to be my search engine of choice, but lately the website layout has become too crowded. when compared to Google: too much information when all I want is one search box.”
“Yahoo! content is still great, but I prefer Google’s speed over Yahoo!’s slow page loading times. If both were equally fast, I’d probably choose Yahoo!.”
“I used to use Yahoo! all the time; however, I found that I got better results with Google. I will continue using Google no matter who runs Yahoo!. ”
The key to comments are two fold. First it was clear that many users of Google were former Yahoo! users for search. Second, most respondents said they were happy with Google search results and that Yahoo! would need to improve or innovate on a large scale to get them to break current search habits.
Jerry Yang’s return may signal a return by Yahoo! to more focus on search but the CEO change alone does not appear to be influencing actual users of search. Google continues to remain the king of search.