New study shows search engines are far from equal

New research shows widely differing attitudes to internet search engines amongst the consumers using them, in findings that will have major repercussions for advertisers planning search engine marketing campaigns.

The new study of search attitudes was conceived and commissioned by Microsoft and carried out by Nielsen NetRatings in the UK during August and September 2007. It reveals sharp differences between the amount of trust that different search engines engender in their users, and major distinctions between attitudes to sponsored listings on different sites. Windows Live Search emerged as by far the most trusted search engine, with Live Search users around 50 per cent more likely than Google users to trust the links that it provides. Live Search users were also far more receptive to advertiser-sponsored links than those of other search engines, with 36 per cent saying they viewed a site more favourably if it appeared in the sponsored links section, a key finding for those looking to maximise the impact of search engine marketing campaigns. This was double the result for the nearest competitors (AOL and Yahoo!), whilst Google lagged further behind on 15 per cent

In all, 95 per cent of Live Search users agreed that they trusted the search engine, with 69 per cent saying that it would only list trusted sites. Both figures were over 5 percentage points higher than for the nearest competitors in each category, while Google users were 12 percentage points less likely to trust their engine, and 22 percentage points less likely to believe that it would list only trusted sites.

See the implications for search engine marketing