Google and Bing top customer satisfaction study

(Google)

Search engines Google and Bing scored highest in a report of customer satisfaction conducted in the United States by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

The 2011 E-Business report, the 12th of its kind, was conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index and analytics firm ForeSee Results. The report was based on data from over 70,000 respondents regarding the quality of products and services; each company measured received a score ranging from 1 (lowest) to 100 (highest).

Under the category of Internet Portals & Search Engines a total of seven companies - AltaVista, AOL, MSN (Microsoft), Yahoo!, Ask.com, Bing (Microsoft), and Google - plus an "All Others" category were scored in terms of customer satisfaction.

Google scored the highest with 83, followed by Bing with 82, All Others with 81 and Ask.com with 80. According to the ACSI a score of 80 and above is considered "excellent."

Google 's score of 83 represents a four percent increase when compared to last year's report; however its closest challenger, Bing, registered a year-on-year increase of seven percent. Additionally the difference between Bing and Google in terms of customer satisfaction decreased from three points in 2010 to just one in 2011.

While customer satisfaction with Google and Microsoft's Bing may bring the two sites closer together, reports suggest that internet users still favor Google when to comes to daily usage. A June report into internet usage in the UK by Experian Hitwise reinforces this trend, finding that Google accounted for 92.02 percent of all UK searches in June, whereas only 2.88 percent were attributed to Microsoft sites.

ACSI - http://www.theacsi.org
Experian Hitwise - http://www.hitwise.com