Americans are more satisfied with Google Search than they were a year ago, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) 2024 Annual Search and Social Media Survey.
Why we care. Many search marketers and news publishers have complained that various aspects of Google Search have deteriorated in recent years, especially in the last couple of years (e.g. due to various algorithm updates and the arrival of AI insights). However, surprisingly (shocking?), this survey indicates that the perception of Google has not changed among the masses.
Increased Google user satisfaction. Google remains the leading search engine. Its ACSI score increased to 81, up from 80 in 2023.
2002-2023. Google’s ACSI score has varied over the years.
- Google’s peak was 86 in 2008 and 2009.
- The lowest level of Google was 75in 2022.
Other search engines. Overall, search engine satisfaction remained unchanged from last year, with an ASCI score of 80.
- DuckDuckGo’s score (79) remained unchanged from last year.
- Microsoft’s Bing score rose to 77 (from 75) while Yahoo’s rose to 76 (from 74).
But. In an independent survey, Americans said they were frustrated that they spend more time searching for services online today than they did five years ago. Dig deeper into the survey: 54% of people are viewing more search results than 5 years ago.
Social media ad experience concern. Advertising was “the worst part” of the customer experience on social media platforms (in four areas: ability to use a site without advertising interruptions; balance between advertising and non-advertising content; reliability of advertisements; and personal relevance of advertisements viewed), according to ACSI:
- “Respondents consider their encounters with advertising on social media platforms to be the worst part of the customer experience. The new ACSI benchmarks on the reliability and personal relevance of advertising content have become particular concerns of users.
Satisfaction on social networks is improving. Overall, social media satisfaction improved to 74, marking three consecutive years of improvement. Some interesting takeaways from the survey:
- TikTok became the industry leader in satisfaction, with a score of 78, ahead of YouTube (77).
- Meta’s Facebook and Instagram both increased user satisfaction by three points.
About the investigation. ACSI defines itself as a “national economic indicator of customer ratings of the quality of products and services available to domestic consumers in the United States.” Results are based on 8,940 surveys completed by randomly selected customers contacted by email between July 2023 and June 2024.
Several “experience criteria” were taken into account in the survey, including:
- Ease of navigation
- Ease of use of the site on different devices
- Variety of services and information.
- Freshness of content
- Number of ads on the site