ForeSee links customer satisfaction with search engine satisfaction

Scary? It should be. A product could be heads above the competition but if a customer has a hard time with a search query that could be for naught.

The "American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Annual E-Business Report" found search engine Google (86% satisfaction) ranking highest in customer satisfaction while AOL (70% satisfaction) ranked last, although the AOL engine also has the most improved score compared to 2008. One interesting finding is that many niche search engines are ranked higher this year, an indication that consumers are turning to specific search engines based on the type of query they have. In fact, the 'All Other' search engine category ranks second for satisfaction with 78%.

The report indicates that higher customer satisfaction equals higher consumer retention, which improves overall revenue.

In addition to customer satisfaction, Google continues to lead other engines in the ">number of search queries. According to comScore in July Google accounted for 65% of the 13.6 billion search queries made. Yahoo accounted for just under 20% and Microsoft (including Bing) accounted for 8.4% of queries.

Consumers queried Google 8.9 million times, Yahoo 2.6 billion and Microsoft 1.2 billion.

Tags: comScore, customer satisfaction, ForeSee Results, Google, Microsoft, niche search engines, search engine, search engine satisfaction, Yahoo