Forrester Stats, Search Defection & Vertical Search
Charlene Li shares some stats from internal Forrester research about search loyalty in
The battle for search loyalty drives innovation. Is Google facing defections? Will vertical search wipe out the big boys? Those are the suggestions, but things
aren’t that simple.
A key finding is that Google has a lead among consumers who regularly use its tools, but these consumers also frequently use other tools as well. The suggestion is
that this leaves the door open for “defection.”
Yep — and that’s always been the case. We’ve long had reports that consumers use multiple search services. But the classic AltaVista to Google defection example
shows that defection tends to happen not just because another tool is better but also because the existing tool is bad.
In other words, my view is that it’s not that MSN needs to be “good enough” to get people from Google or even “better than Google” to gain defectors. People will only
kick the Google habit if they feel Google is getting worse.
If Google itself continues to be “good enough,” helping consumers find what they are looking for most of the time, I don’t think you’ll see big defections happen. In
fact, if AltaVista had continued to be “good enough,” Google might never have been able to emerge as the powerhouse it is today. But AltaVista wasn’t good enough — it
had gotten bad.
Notable from the report is the fact that despite the threats to Google, it continues to lead among consumers while Yahoo is said to have lost some share of searchers
this year compared to last.
There’s also a finding that the major search engines will “cede ground” to “search specialists.” Sure, that will happen. If there’s a good vertical search tool,
people will learn to go to it. Heck, consider the people who already head directly Amazon to buy a book. They’ve learned it provides answers they need, so there’s no
need to search the web (My past article, Avoiding The Search Gap, looks at this type of behavior
more).
So the threat is there — but also is the reality that if a great vertical pops up, it’s likely the major search engines will buy into the space or develop their own:
Forrester’s stats also found: