Marketers might have a love-hate relationship with Google, but it’s loved by customers everywhere. That’s according to 70,000 users who were surveyed as part of the 2013 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) e-Business report.

Google the Great

US Customer Survey Google Love Grows as Bing Satisfaction Drops | Small Screen Producer Digital and Inbound Marketing Agency Houston

Based on a list of criteria below, Google received an overall rating of 83 (out of 100), up from 77 just a year ago. However, Bing’s score lowered down to 73 (from 76).

The scores were calculated based on the following:

  • Site performance
  • Freshness of content
  • Variety of services and information
  • Ease of using the site on different devices such as smartphones and tablets
  • Ease of navigation
  • Speed and reliability of video clips
  • Amount of ads on site

US Customer Survey Google Love Grows as Bing Satisfaction Drops | Small Screen Producer Digital and Inbound Marketing Agency Houston

The report concluded that search engines provide a better experience for customers more so than any other e-business category. Additionally, search engines received high marks for site performance and mobile compatibility.Users rated content on search engines “far better than newspaper websites and social media”. Even though search ads were described as the “worst aspect of the user search experience,” search ads were more acceptable to customers than ads on social media and websites, ACSI reported.

Pinterest is Top Dog

Although internet social media is now ranked as the fourth lowest-scoring category in the ACSI just above airlines, subscription television, and internet service providers. What keeps the overall social media rating low? You can thank “privacy concerns and proliferation of advertisements”.

US Customer Survey Google Love Grows as Bing Satisfaction Drops | Small Screen Producer Digital and Inbound Marketing Agency Houston

Pinterest, however, climbs 6% to an ACSI score of 71. Thanks to thoughtful features and smarter search functionality, this latest report pushes Pinterest to the top of the social media category.

YouTube (score of 73) is tied with all other social media sites including Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr. Google+ levels out to be the same at 71, but ranks higher than Facebook. Twitter receives the highest rate to date at 69. According to this particular report, Facebook and LinkedIn have been reported as the lowest satisfying social networks even though both gains of 8% from 2013.