Yahoo Bests Google in User Satisfaction

YYahoo is moving into favor with consumers, scoring higher than Google in a survey of consumer satisfaction published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Meanwhile, Apple experienced some growing pains.

Yahoo moved up four points to a score of 79, a sign of good news for a company following what could be considered disappointing financial results. The search engine recently redesigned its site, along with adding new functionality.

Google was not far behind though, scoring 78. Ask.com, which also recently redesigned its site, moved up 6 points to a score of 75. AOL dropped significantly, down 10 points to 67, the lowest score of any search engine in the survey.

The University of Michigan produces the consumer satisfaction index every quarter, and its authors claim that the index is a good predictor of future success and stock price. The numbers are also used by the stock market to gauge overall consumer sentiment as well.

On the PC side of things, consumers are cooling on overall satisfaction with the industry, as the number fell three points to 75. The two companies leading the decline were Apple and Dell, both dropping 5 percent each.

"Apple has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years," said Prof. Claes Fornell, head of the ACSI at the University of Michigan. "As Toyota can attest, it's not easy to manage quality and customer satisfaction when a company quickly has to increase production or provide service to a larger number of customers."

Even with the decline, Apple is still the highest rated PC manfacturer with a score of 79. Oft-maligned Compaq remains at the bottom of the list with a score of 73.