Although Google keeps gaining search engine market share, people’s loyalties are far from locked in. J.P. Morgan Internet analyst Imran Khan recently conducted a survey to see if Web consumers would be willing to switch search engines. He found that 62 percent would. The biggest reason that would cause them to change? Better search results (45 percent of all respondents said this would make them switch, and 48 percent of respondents who use Google as their main engine).
The responses, in order of popularity:
-
Better results (45 percent).
Nothing would make me change (38 percent).
Faster response speeds to search (28 percent).
Less cluttered results (27 percent).
The ability to preview Web content (23 percent).
Less clutter on search sites (27 percent)
Results that include video, web, and music (12 percent)
Other (1 percent)
I’ve recreated the poll below so that you can take it. J.P. Morgan’s poll was only among 766 U.S. residents. We can probably do better than that.
Here are some more results from J.P. Morgan’s poll, including the demographics of different search engine users. Google attracts both the wealthiest (70 percent of people with incomes greater than $100,000) and the youngest serachers (67 percent of people between 18 and 41).
Google is king in all those categories. Semantic web search is how you beat Google.
hard to say, probably is how one kills itself too.
most people dont know how to search properly. its a better way/format to provide the results to the user…. not better results in the same format.
when properly positioned a strategic 1300 channel natural language “location engine network” will kick G’s butt any day of the week. i voted for less cluttered results.
KillerLocator.com – easy prey
Google is becoming more semantic in their results, people can’t forget that they’re constantly improving their algos to better match queries.
Anyone notice how good they are getting at results when you try and phrase in questions? That’s basic semantics in practice.
But you can’t do a simple survey like this and have its results matter. Both Google and Yahoo are so much more than just search engines. There email systems often lead you to use there search engines as does the igoogle or the yahoo equivalent.
One of the main reasons for the Cuil effect is a single search engine is about 30 features behind the yahoos and googles and the features are whole websites.
Make search engines like a mini lottery. Every time you search on yahoo.com, you get the chance to win $10,000. Even if the odds were low, I would try my luck every now and then.
http://kisalt.us/590/
They did this back in the dotcom bubble. Its called iwon.com and it’s still around. Never really made a big splash.
Google has been reluctant as well as kind of opposing the semantic web. Exactly, semantic web is next big thing where the power that google is holding now will be gradually transferred to other smaller entities.
Cheers !!
Being king is good for google but not for the researching user. Any big Co. that tends to share information with regimes that will use that information toward oppressive ends will surely have less ethical qualm about using that information toward its own ends. Don’t be surprised if the most secret weapon in this market dominator’s arsenal is an internally used semantic search engine whose main function is to determine the next great ideas by studying entrepreneur researcher’s search patterns and beating many startup prospect’s entry to market under the auspices of just another well-camouflaged “cool” google project. Make yourself and everyone a favor, when researching on your great idea, try splitting your search efforts between different search engines so not one single company knows exactly what you’re up to.
Haven’t you heard? Google has got semantic web going…
Try searching for “Who is Brad Pitt’s Wife?” and look at the item above all the results….
I meant semantic search… oops.
So has Live Search
do your search there and you will see similiar results.
Yahoo is the best Google is boring and ad driven
And you think Yahoo isn’t ad driven too?
Have you guys tried http://www.pearlviu.com?
Previews and no ads.
pearlviu.com? great name – was impossibletospell.com already taken?
and IE only?
Zing!
How to ensure your innovative internet start-up idea will NOT catch on:
1) Give it a name that can’t really be pronounced out loud or easily remembered, but must be copied and pasted into a new browser tab
2) Make it only accessible to IE users
3) Failure is assured!
/I recently (two months ago) switched from Firefox to Google Chrome. It’s faster, less buggy, and more aesthetically pleasing. It is also quite adept at guessing what you’re looking for (it is from Google, after all). Google “chrome” and try it!
Google is the least ad driven search engine of all major ones.
Yahoo is far more ad driven, And Live Search… I think there is no need to say more…
Google can’t be beaten. – Not in near future!
They have most advanced algo, and they keep improving it everyday.
Please, say more about Live Search.
I’m comparing their page with a Google results page right now. I see less ads on the LIve Search results and less or equal sponsored results.
So, please, elaborate.
a natural language search engine that actual works . powerset is a big failure only thing it does is feed you wikipedia links.
How about being ethical?
If you are doing research on a product and search engine is watching your IP, they might deduce what you are doing and steal the idea.
Nobody cares about ethics in China when searching the web, if that’s what you mean. Sorry
I actually find more useful information on Twitter, following the minds of the worlds greatest people, then I do on any search engine.
Are you on crack?
lol!
I can’t wait to see what Skrenta’s got cooking.
Results are king, that’s the big reason Google gained adoption and if/when someone comes out with better, more intuitive results, the crown will be theirs for the taking.
No, they gained market share initially due to a great marketing gimmick. “Go Google it”. .. Go Yahoo! it, or Yodel it doesnt give the same sense of the action.
What non-sense. So, why didn’t Search.com become the biggest search engine?
Google gained market share initially because they actually cared about search. Excite, Alta Vista and the other crap portals cared about cramming as much stuff onto their home page as possible and their search engines were a joke and mostly full of spam and porn.
Google changed the way people search by doing it right and letting everything else fall in place.
somehow google forgeting to register the domain name google.com and someone else buying it
Although i guess that’d be against trademark..
Make search engines like a mini lottery. Every time you search on yahoo.com, you get the chance to win $10,000. Even if the odds were low, I would try my luck every now and then.
good for pron searches
totally skewed poll. let’s show people the results and then make them vote as if they never saw them!
This is interesting to think about. Many would agree that Yahoo is probably a better search engine, yet most of us (myself included) only use Google. Why? What makes us use one search engine over another?
A lot of people don’t like the portal look and feel. Google came along with a faster, stripped down, more accurate search. People are comfortable with Google.
I for one like the portal look but it could be a little scaled down from how yahoo looks but not plain like google looks throw in a couple of icons/relevant services and im fine.
I cant stand text based pages such as google’s home page I get tired enough as it is look a plain text.
depends, if at a computer, Google
on my mobile , MSN Livesearch
Absolutely agree with the original poll and results coming in so far. The same recipe that beat Yahoo will someday beat Google. I say this as a fan of Google, but the results have gotten noticeably worse in the last few years, and I wouldn’t hestitate to jump ship if something better came along.
a new favicon of course.
I use the search engines to market with ppc.
It is no longer cost effective for me. So I am putting a store on ebay and doing social marketing. Starting with twitter.
I would try out other search engines if they were options in my FireFox toolbar — Google is the most convenient to use, since I have the Google toolbar installed for my Gmail and bookmarks. I would try Live Search if it were an option, but that isn’t available as a toolbar search box on anything other than IE — a mistake in my opinion.
Glad someone mentioned it. I basically live in my browser (FF, claro que si), and I’ll use whatever search engine they stick in there.
The browser is a lower, more fundamental level of the web software stack than search.
That’s not a mistake at all. It’s intentional on Google’s part and why google pays 88% of mozilla’s “non-profit” income.
Erik –
Thanks for the report. In the end however, similar to almost all investment banking reports, these numbers are meaningless.
Users have said they’d be willing to switch for years. What user wouldn’t say so? What user wouldn’t want something better?
The data shows that Google has increasingly dominated the consumer’s mind in recent history. Over and over again, despite expressing interest in something better, MSN Ask and Yahoo have all fallen behind. And are there even any underdogs gaining share? I haven’t heard of any.
Its like asking someone in 2000 if they would want a better cell phone and what features would they want. They would say yes. But No one, not one person, would describe the IPhone to you. And yet its the best selling phone.
A significantly better product has to be Shown to a consumer and then we can make a judgment if they would actually switch to the product.
Until something is created, its all white smoke.
Thats why those I-Bankers spend 80 hours a week creating surveys … they have no clue how to create the next best search engine. If they did, they wouldn’t be a paper pusher.
Check out my new search engine Duck Duck Go: http://duckduckgo.com/
I’m just getting started, but it’s all about using human powered sources to deliver in three of these poll categories at once: “Results that better match my search term”, “A more uncluttered easy way to navigate site”, and “Faster response speed to searches”.
Interesting reporting slant at the end. You could have easily said that Google attracts the largest share of older people, as well as lower-income people — because in fact it attracts the largest percentage in all demographic categories. So why single out younger and wealthier?
I’ve thought about this for a while.
What I want is the best result. I guess we all want that.
So to win me, Yahoo! or the like should get some clever marketing people to come up with a campaign that convince me.
The evidence/campaign could include some examples and easy-to-understand explanations of why it’s better.
I just tried switching to Yahoo!, but there’s something I don’t like about the design and the speed. So I’m back with Google.
Much like Google revolutionized the search world by introducing the unanticipated (i.e. something J.P. Morgan could not have polled for before it existed — notice the high “happy” rates.) In the same way anything that is going to dislodge Google for me (and I’m sure there will be some day) will provide something that isn’t on the lists provided in this article.
excellent information
How about an easier way to save my search results / favorites and tie them in with my bookmarks.
Often I find stuff after fine tuning my search query. Weeks or month later I can’t remember how I found the stuff and have to go on the hunt all over again.
@peterurban
How about a decent video search engine? ala http://www.truveo.com or http://bit.ly/twPv ?
Nothing, why should I switch? Google already stores all the data nothing worse can happen.
You can try Webzzle.com and the 1-click Explore button (take the buttons or the plugin).
From any web page, you get Wikipedia external links and Google enhanced results.
Google copied AltaVista’s simple blank page with a search box. If Microsoft simply copied Google and just had a blank page with a little box and clean, simple results, I’d probably switch to it.
That’s pretty much what you get with live.com.
In fact, i actually think it’s much less intrusive and more attractive than the harsh primary colors of google, but it’s all personal opinion.
I think it’ll take more than this to dislodge the loyalty that google has, most of which came about because they were the first to be really good at web search (I used altavista back in the day and only switched to google after it had been better for a long time).
There’s definitely room to improve, but enough to cause people to re learn the habit of typing “google.com”? maybe not.
Something drastic would have to happen to make people switch from Google. Even if someone came along with better results, people stick with what they are comfortable with. Google would have to falter badly.
Even then, a 5 person garage start up can’t topple Google. They would need a radical concept and the technology and millions to boot. Powerset tried and failed. Cuil tried and epically failed. Look how much money they got in funding and they had pretty smart and experienced people and couldn’t do it.
Google is constantly changing and while it may not always be for the best like their wikisearch, they will be the king for years to come.
We definitely need more innovation in search.
Google is good, but it is not great. Unfortunately, none of the hyped up google killers have done anything, including Cuil and Powerset.
I am hoping that 2009 will be a better year and we will see some real competition.
The only alternative search engine worth its salt was Previewseek.
Unfortunately, they seem to have gone corporate and seem to have shifted their business model to the enterprise.
Really a shame. Both Scoble and Arrington had given it nice reviews when it came out and it was my default search engine for awhile.
Erick
Do you know how big is the sample size? It’s meaningless without that. He might just talked to 10 of his friends! Who knows.
“J.P. Morgan’s poll was only among 766 U.S. residents”
Answers in the post, you just got to read it
Erick
Do you know how big is the sample size? It’s meaningless without that. He might just talked to 10 of his friends! Who knows.
I would pick “Results that better match my search term” but that isn’t quite right. What would really make me switch are results that better match my search INTENTION. I want a search engine that knows me.
I’ll give an example: Earlier today, I was trying to find a site that I know I visited a few months ago, that would tell me what time my foster daughter’s dance classes are held. I think it was a blog site for the local foster parents association, or maybe the children’s aid society. I know that the site had a calendar — I think a google calendar — that included the dance class. What search terms should I use? I tried half a dozen different searches, both on google.com and blogsearch.google.com, but I wasn’t able to find the site I needed.
What would make me switch search engines is something that would understand what I’m really searching for, not just return the most relevant results for the search terms I enter.
I don’t expect this any time soon.
You screwed up the poll – so you can’t really compare your results.
The original poll obviously allowed people to choose multiple options (notice that the percentages add up to much more than 100%).
If you wanted to do a good comparison you should have at least had the same parameters.
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
- Steve Jobs
I think that applies here somewhat, too.
You are totally and completely right. You could do everything people say in this poll and they might never switch. You have to give them something unexpected that provides enough benefit (in whatever way: coolness, cashback, etc.) to make them think about something besides the default.
“You have to give them something unexpected that provides enough benefit (in whatever way: coolness, cashback, etc.) to make them think about something besides the default.”
I agree 100%. There needs to be something cool, different, and/or entertaining about it. The results just can’t be “better.” That’s not enough of a factor anymore. It needs to be a Seth Godian Purple Cow.
When Yahoo is bought and reinvents itself, it should be able to accomplish this. But it needs to name someone unique and interesting as the CEO.
A leaked Twitter DM shows that person to be Calacanis: http://twitter....atus/1108187591
You forgot the MAIN answer:
If there would be a search engine with the same (or a bit worse) results BUT WITHOUT THOSE F…ING ADS I would switch immediately.
Same as: if there would be a tech blog with a decent content even slightly worse than TechCrunch but WITHOUT THOSE F…ING ADS USING 90% of the page – I would switch immediately.
That’s how bad it is! (Jay Leno)
@Alex would you pay money to use it?
Sure. $5 a year, maybe $10 a year. Easily.
That’s exactly where I’m leading. The f…ing googlonomics AdNonsense and all this endless stupidity has just shifted your perception of reality, people.
If the product MEETS MY NEEDS – I’m ready to buy it. If it doesn’t – yeah, you can lure me once, lure me twice (to show your VC the ‘adoption’), but I’m not your customer.
But the biggest BS is the F…ckbook web-site, this is just fun to watch how it’s unfolding… or maybe folding already, dunno.
P.S. F.i. I pay a considerable amount of money for LinkedIn every month, I pay for other services (many), but I would NEVER pay a penny to FB, Their BS is just insulting my intelligence for some reason.
It has great value for affiliate marketers
I don’t know what it SEEMS to be to the affiliate marketers. But it’s plain NOTHING if you are just a vendor offering you product or service to the customers. Ads don’t work, campaigns don’t work… Forget about it, it’s not a vehicle for business. It’s a perfect vehicle for BS though.
Google buries a lot of relevant articles and information for inexplicable reasons. Yahoo’s results are less cluttered, WAY less duplicated and far more relevant. The search engine war is far from over and I feel a change coming. Becoming a verb isn’t easy though.
Erick, There is a huge difference between the poll JP (switch) did and the one you are asking (try out). To Switch means moving from IE to Mozilla while trying out means What I did with Vista.
As for trying out, I would try out any search engine I hear of (e.g. Cuil). As for switching, I might be easier to switch nationality faster than switching from Google.
Please change your Poll language to that of JP to see if you can replicate the results.
Interesting point
Check out http://www.zookfind.com . Every day this sites improves and is becoming more impressive.
I don’t want to just see the results that a single search engine wants to give me.
Zookfind delivers search results of Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN
Check out http://www.zookfind.com .
I don’t want to just see the results that a single search engine wants to give me.
Zookfind delivers search results of Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN
Would dump Google if I found a search engine that did not return results for my search phrase that included sites in Australia, Canada and the UK. Even though they are in English, don’t want those and it is a waste of time having to scroll through them!!!
Most such polls do not define what is / isn’t a search engine — for example; is cars.com a search engine for cars or is hotels.com a search engine for hotels? Why / Why not?
why get the results from 1 search engine when you can have the results from 4 – google, ask, msn and yahoo at the same time.
http://www.zookfind.com
I did not get much from the switching numbers, however the demographic numbers are fascinating. MSN, AOL and to a lesser extent Yahoo are used by older users while Google is preferred by younger users. Also Google is preferred by high income users while Yahoo trends heavily towards low income users. You can see why Google makes a lot more money from its advertising than Yahoo.
If Yahoo wants me to switch, it better change that interface, it is just too noisy and cluttered. I don’t feel comfortable browsing through the search results.
Hey – ditch the pie chart willya? It’s too hard to read – bar chart way better.
It’s very hard to switch from Google to other search engine,Google is doing all well for you.
I am addicted to Google and if there is something that makes me change has to be something which looks and feels like Google and lets me also look at results from other search engines. The closest I’ve seen is http://fefoo.com/ but this is also not perfect.