mediajunk

Bill Condie of the Evening Standard reports on the findings of a recent search engine survey: "A survey in the US commissioned by Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services found that 48% of search engine users say they use Google most overall, compared with 20% for Yahoo, 14% for Microsoft's MSN and 7% for AOL. But 60% of Google users said they would switch search engines if a better service were introduced." Interpreting these figures, it might seem that Google users are fickle. I would argue the opposite. The reason Google "stole" users from other search engines was by offering a faster, higher quality service, with more relevant results, and no ads mixed with listings. As Google often points out, its success lay in the fact that it concentrated on doing one thing -- search -- as well as it could, and by putting users first. Google is free. If another search engine were to offer users, for free, similar services of an even higher quality, then of course you would expect users to migrate, just as they migrated to Google in the first place. The intriguing thing about this survey is that 40% of users would not migrate, even if a better search service were offered to them. Now that's what I call brand loyalty.