Yahoo Edges out Google in Customer Satisfaction

athloi writes "The University of Michigan's American Consumer Satisfaction Index shows some significant shifts this year in consumer satisfaction among several major online players: Google, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL. For one, Google no longer holds first place. 'The ACSI report notes that Yahoo's jump into first place was a 4 percent increase over its score from last year, while Google saw a 4 percent decrease during the same time period. ACSI says that to the untrained eye, Google's home page today looks almost identical to the way it looked years ago. This is where Google's simplicity is apparently hurting it in the long-term, as new users just aren't seeing Google's new offerings--such as increased storage options, additions to Google Maps, and tweaks to Google Image Search--right in front of their faces like they do with other sites.'"

Spot on

[Prysorra]

At least with google maps.

Take a look at yahoo maps. It's ..... done. Those whole world is there.

Now when I want to see if google maps added any countries, I have to go to a BLOGSPOT blog. (http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/)

They're waaaayy too slow actually actually finalize a product. Check out the labs. (labs.google.com).

What....*what* is still beta???

Perhaps...

[ral315]

Perhaps the best move is to have some Google Blog entries on the main page. If done tactfully, they could easily inform users of new updates without becoming as bloated as Yahoo has.

Of course...

[JesseL]

I'm sure that far more people still use Google, and most of those people would be even less satisfied with Yahoo!.

Actually...

[AKAImBatman]

This is where Google's simplicity is apparently hurting it in the long-term, as new users just aren't seeing Google's new offerings--such as increased storage options, additions to Google Maps, and tweaks to Google Image Search--right in front of their faces like they do with other sites.

It's not their simplicity that's hurting them, it's that they've failed to follow through on their success. The search engine was an amazing tool, and GMail was absolutely wonderful. But after that they had quite a few missteps. Maps was initially less useful than, say, MapQuest due to poor directions. This was eventually improved upon, but now Google is fighting the first-impression syndrome. Similarly, Google Video failed to appeal to most users. Google eventually gave up and bought their competitor: YouTube. Which sent the message that Google Video was as much of a failure as everyone thought it was.

Then you've got increasing complaints about their AdSense and AdWords services. Various webmasters complaining that they were kicked out of the program for no discernible reason. AdWords advertisers who say that they're getting charged for links they didn't get. Etc.

It all adds up to an age old problem: It's hard to maintain the top position. All the eyeballs are focused on you, and if you don't deliver you're going to get heavily criticized for it.

Re:Google still seems to be the most innovative

[epee1221]

Google seems to be the best with developers and coming up with new technologies.

All of Yahoo's improvements were in their expanding "web portal" services -- they're not taking over search. It's the webmail (now with AJAX!), calendar, photo sharing, etc. that have people interested in Yahoo. Most people don't realize Google offers anything other than search.

Re:Yahoo! - it's the new AOL.

[Sergeant Pepper]

Actually, his implication had nothing at all to do with that. Statistically, it is very difficult to conduct a survey that is unbiased and this one most likely was biased. If they send papers to people requesting a response it could have self-selection bias. If they call people that is another type of bias because your results would be more geared towards some groups of people than others (people who work from home, the unemployed, housewives, etc.).

I'd like to see how they conducted their survey (too lazy to RTFA) but I would almost guarantee that there was some sort of bias present. As for whether or not it affected the outcome... that's a horse of a different color.

Re:Spot on

[fm6]

I've said it many times before, but maybe this time people will stop and think before dismissing me as a troll.

Google does not know how to produce mature applications. They only hire brilliant people (or people who are good at passing themselves as brilliant; and yes I do have specific individuals in mind) and they let people work pretty much without supervision. Plus, they have a rule that all developers must spend a fixed percentage of time on unassigned projects!

So basically, their developers never have to do anything they don't really want to do. I've worked in organizations that fostered this kind of working environment (though usually not intentionally) and here's what happens: developers spend all their time finding intellectually challenging work to do, and just ignore all the boring stuff. So you get lots of kewl new features, but nobody's squashing bugs or polishing the GUI, or doing any of the other boring chores you need to polish the rough edges off a product.

You mention Yahoo maps versus Google maps. For a long time, the technology behind Google maps was way superior to Yahoo's. In some ways, it still is. (Yahoo doesn't let you change your route with a simple drag.) But Yahoo has always been ahead of Google in the boring-but-necessary stuff, like providing simple drop-down lists of your memorized locations. Google didn't even have memorized locations for a long time, and when they finally implemented it, they used a weird keyword system that's a pain to use.

Google really needs to hire some relatively stupid plodders to go in and clean up stuff. Hey, I'm available!

Re:Spot on

[hibiki_r]

As far as Spain is concerned, it's hard to argue that yahoo has way less info than google maps. If you thought things look bad in Madrid, try a smaller city, Like Oviedo: The detailed maps are not even there.

All the time.

[C10H14N2]

Like, every time I open FireFox or OperaMini. ...and then there are things like this:

Search:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fwTQKZ-j6Fk [youtube.com]
Earth:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DletSFRKS7M [youtube.com]
Search Appliance:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QQWn0kkWX8E [youtube.com] ...and of course...

Maps:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ug_dIOE7x8Q [youtube.com]

Re:Spot on

[TheGratefulNet]

They only hire brilliant people (or people who are good at passing themselves as brilliant).

don't believe this! they look for robots and coders (not really engineers) who pass multiple phone interview quizzes and tests that really test nothing other than giving the interviewer an ego boost. if you're right out of school you might do ok; but if you have actual field and industry experience and are a bit more seasoned than just being a human coding engine, they won't want you.

(ask me how I know...)

Re:Spot on

[thePsychologist]

However, Google maps has the advantages:

-Can modify driving route directly from the map by dragging a square
-Doesn't require flash

Re:Good ping times

[wwwillem]

Ehhhh:

bash-3.00$ ping -s www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo.com: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from f1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com (209.191.93.52): icmp_seq=0. time=57.436 ms
64 bytes from f1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com (209.191.93.52): icmp_seq=1. time=53.995 ms

bash-3.00$ ping -s www.google.com
PING www.google.com: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from qb-in-f147.google.com (72.14.205.147): icmp_seq=0. time=7.700 ms
64 bytes from qb-in-f147.google.com (72.14.205.147): icmp_seq=1. time=7.029 ms

Over here 7.5 ms is still faster than 55 ms. :)

Re:Perhaps...

[arashi no garou]

Yahoo has "fanbois"? The only people I know who prefer Yahoo to anything else are either middle-aged women or cops (sometimes both). Strangely enough, most cops I know -- and I work with lots of them every day -- are suspicious of Google. Ask them to Google something and they invariably pull up Yahoo or MSN. Do they perhaps know something we don't?

Re:Good ping times

[Phroggy]

I wonder how much bandwidth yahoo.com uses just for ICMP traffic alone. There are thousands of machines out there that ping yahoo.com to test Internet connectivity. I wonder how much of the Internet would break horribly if Yahoo decided to firewall pings?

Re:Spot on

[inKubus]

Actually, they are hiring 100 sales managers and sales reps for every programmer, hardware tech or other technical position. They don't want experienced programmers because they are more expensive and are tough to brainwash. Not to say they aren't doing well with what they have. But the model is to build a large computer out of commodity parts and do stuff with it. That's about it. And of course grow and multiply like a virus, just asking cheap techs for more hardware when it needs it. They've basically managed to program themselves a growing business. And as long as there's a web, we'll need it. The problem is the web growth is slowing in the US. India and China and the rest of Asia is still growing rapidly. Google is not very present there but Yahoo has made it a priority almost since day one. Probably due to the fact that one of the founders is Asian. So Yahoo wins as far as services growth. Yahoo knows they can keep up with the indexing by just having a lot of humans sorting their index, and using some of the tech they might have reverse engineered from Google. And Yahoo has a society built around it. I rather like it. Although I use Google for technical searches.