Google may have the lions share of the search engine market but it seems that Yahoo is better at giving people what they are looking for.
According to Compete only 65% of searches carried out on Google actually end up with a referral. That means that in 35% of cases the results were not good enough for the user to click on a result. Yahoo has a higher score of 75% whereas MSN is lower at around 59%.
The data is interesting but it could be skewed by a number of factors. Not least that Yahoo has more PPC ads for users to click on. Google is also very good at answering questions without people needing to click to another site. I use Google as a spell checker and calculator every day for example.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, very interesting.
The last part is hilarious, Google Search is also my spell checker, which sad to say I use quite often. You provide great posts with a dash of humor and I am now a new RSS reader, thanks.
I 100% agree with last part of post, because I use Google as spell checker (mentioned above), calculator, zip-code finder, address and phone number finder, that are often shown in description of search, and for other purposes that don’t require extra clicks.
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