http://blog.compete.com/2007/09/26/search-queries-results-yahoo-google-msn-live/
http://home.compete.com.edgesuite.net/site_media/upl/img/JC-SearchFulfillment2.1.gif
Searchers are more apt to click on a listing once visiting Yahoo, than Google.
Surprisingly, MSN is neck to neck with Google in terms of clicks per visit. |
So the rest of the people click on ads? Or maybe they refine the requires until they get better results? There are also the OneBoxes and snippets that answer your query and you don't have to click on the result. |
Compete: <<So the obvious question is which search engine is doing the best job from a “search fulfillment” standpoint?>>
Sorry, I cannot see this question being necessarily answered by their stats. All the statistics, for the sake of argument let's assume they're correct (they may be, I'm just saying that I don't know), only show the number of click-throughs per search. This could mean any of the following things:
- The Yahoo crowd is less experienced in good searching and doesn't refine a query when it would be necessary to get a good result
- The Yahoo crowd needs to actually "see" a site before it can determine whether or not it's good, meaning the Yahoo snippet is not as useful
- Yahoo has more relevant results than Google
- Yahoo is using less non-web-search related oneboxes, e.g. I very often search for a word just to click on the definition link, and I very often search for stuff like "100 / 2.3" where I obviously don't click on a link, it's just to trigger the Google calculator
- Yahoo simply has & attracts a different audience, which – no matter what the search engine result does or looks like, no matter its quality – has different usage patterns
- Yahoo search results are showing too slow, so people rather click on a 70% good result than wait for another results page to load
- More people are accessing Yahoo from their mobile phone, where they may be resistant to cause too many KB to download, hence they always take the first result page
- etc. etc.
Some of these I wouldn't consider likely, some of these I would, and many more I might not see.... this is just to illustrate potential problems with the single answer derived from these statistics. |
It's also interesting to see how many sites (and what kind of sites) get more referrals from Yahoo Search than Google Search. For most sites, the traffic from Yahoo is almost insignificant. |
