According to a study released this week by Compete Incorporated, 67% of the 7.5 billion monthly searches done by the U.S. online population in August were done using Google and 65% of those prompted a user to click on a result, while Yahoo logged 20% of all searches in August, 75% of which led to referrals. Yahoo posted the best referral result among search engine vendors, the survey found. The survey ranked Microsoft Corporation's MSN Live engine third, with 9% of the search market and about 59% of MSN Live queries generating referrals. "Lower search fulfillment numbers mean that on a percentage basis, fewer search queries in that engine resulted in the searcher clicking on a result link," said Jeremy Crane, Compete's director of search and online media in a blog post.
Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team, noted on Compete's blog that sometimes searchers get answers from the snippets that appear on the results page - in other words, Google's results don't always require users to click on a link. "On Yahoo, you don't get any OneBox answer, and the snippets are unclear. You need to click on a result or two to find the answer," Cutts wrote. Although Crane agreed, he pointed out that "getting people to your site is a critical measure of search engine effectiveness. In this world, the most important thing to look at is actual conversion on the site."
News source: ComputerWorld
Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team, noted on Compete's blog that sometimes searchers get answers from the snippets that appear on the results page - in other words, Google's results don't always require users to click on a link. "On Yahoo, you don't get any OneBox answer, and the snippets are unclear. You need to click on a result or two to find the answer," Cutts wrote. Although Crane agreed, he pointed out that "getting people to your site is a critical measure of search engine effectiveness. In this world, the most important thing to look at is actual conversion on the site."
News source: ComputerWorld
Edit: ^ Maybe I should read the second half of the article before restating something that's already been written in the article.
Also does the survey take into account Google "searches" such as "define: word" or "10 km in miles" where the results are displayed directly, and don't result in a need to click.
Yeah, that's something I've been doing, too. I always use Google for web results, but I've noticed that Yahoo Images generally has been returning better image results. So, I've been using that instead.
all the yahoo searches are little girls typing in celebrity's names....
EXACTLY the same thing with that crap POS thing called Firefox!!
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