August 14, 2007 8:44 PM
Google Stumbles, Yahoo Rises and the Interweb Rejoices
In a seemingly rare instance, Yahoo edges up Google in the recent customer satisfaction study by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, online customers rating of Yahoo increases by 4% scoring to 79 while at the same time, Google’s satisfaction rating slides down by 4% scoring 78. And when CNET broke the news even before the official ACSI document was released, everybody in the interweb came out with their own sensational headlines heralding the downfall of Google.
Now that the raucous has died down a bit, perhaps it is but proper timing to take a look on the probable reason why Yahoo edges out Google in the said ranking. Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal gave some good opinions about it and I couldn’t agree more on one valid point that has something to do with the consolidation of Yahoo Photos/Flickr.
Just before the two photo sharing sites were merged, Yahoo informed its million of Yahoo photo users that the service is shutting down and gave them ample time to transfer their photo files into Flickr. Now, correct me if I’m wrong in saying that majority of those Yahoo photo users may not be even aware that Yahoo runs another photo sharing site named Flickr. Otherwise, if those users were aware of that before, they would have migrated their photos into Flickr even before the official announcement from Google.
Now, for those users, that one single instance of Yahoo informing them about the closure of Yahoo photos, would certainly create a good lasting impression about how Yahoo values their customers, that automatically translates to good customer satisfaction.
Of course, this is just one aspect of the probable reasons for the result of the study. And you are free to either contradict or disagree with me. In the meantime, let’s join the whole blogging world in rejoicing for this once in a lifetime feat by Yahoo against Google. And till the next index results.
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