Google stays on top, but Yahoo and MSN closing the gap, study finds

Google still leads as web users’ favored search engine, but search at Yahoo and MSN is closing the gap, according to web performance monitoring provider Keynote Systems Inc. Across 250 metrics and indices tracked in a new study, the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for the Search Engines Industry, Yahoo and MSN gained in several measures since a study published last May, according to Keynote. Relative rankings that place Yahoo in the number two spot, MSN at number three and Ask Jeeves and Lycos at numbers four and five, respectively, haven’t changed since the last study.

“Google is the king of customer experience in the search engine industry, but Yahoo and MSN are clearly improving,” says Bonny Brown, director of research and public service for Keynote. “Given the open nature of the web, as these sites continue to improve the user experience they will undoubtedly begin to attract more users and improve user loyalty. Obviously, this will impact the advertising side of the business.”

The metrics on which Keynote’s study tracked the interaction of 2,000 consumers with search engines covered such areas as brand impact, future usage, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. For example, Yahoo’s expansion of local search service since May lifted it to tie with Google in leading the industry in users’ perception of the quality of local search results.

Another key indicator of customer satisfaction, the perceived usefulness of sponsored search results, is identified by Keynote as one of the top drivers affecting user experience. MSN showed significant improvement on this metric since that last study, with more than 47% of MSN users describing MSN’s sponsored results as very useful, compared to 37% in the previous study.

Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves all improved their standing in the Keynote Future Usage Index, which measures the likelihood of consumers to use a search site as their primary search tool and to return to it in the future. Google stayed on top in this category but didn’t improve its standing since the previous study, while Yahoo boosted the number of users who said they consider the site as their primary search engine by 20% and MSN by almost 30% since May. More than 81% of Yahoo users and 61% of MSN users said they’d return to those sites in the future, compared with 72% of Yahoo users and 55% of MSN users who said so in the earlier study.