Google may lose up to 1 third of its users.

I made an online poll on a very reputable forum (WebProWorld) asking the community about their view on the current level of Google search results and their desire to use/not use Google if the results do not improve.

4,200+ members viewed the poll thread, 129 posted comments and 89 persons actively voted.

And it turned out that with the same level of search results that Google gives, one third of the voted will quit using Google (and switch to Yahoo or MSN). And another third - will use Google only together with Yahoo and MSN as they don't have much trust in the current results.

This can be a real threat to Google as advertising business. Because potentially loosing one third of its faithful users can affect advertising profits.

That is why if you plan to promote your web sites in search engines, don't underestimate Yahoo, MSN and other search engines. That big third part of users should not be wasted. And the times of Google as the only place for advertising are passing away.

Wow, this is very interesting! I'm supposed to be promoting a web site this weekend and I would have guessed that Google is all I need. I see that I should definitely rethink this! Thank you for posting this!

Well, Google have never been known to hide their light under a bushel, and my guess is that they will be working on this issue asap.

I've found that other search engines also seem to have fallen in quality though, and have actually started using Google more, rather than less, recently.

I have the Google toolbar installed on both of my computers. I discovered them while visiting Google Earth, and I frequently use the spell check feature.

I think that Google Earth is a very successful promotional tool.

A few things to know about making conclusions from surveys

You need a large, unbiassed and representative sample--and what they say needs to reliably predict what they will actually do. You dont have any of these things.

For a start, a tiny proportion of viewers responded, dissatisfied google-users would be immensely more likely to respond after veiwing.

Try www.selfpromotion.com. They will promote your site through all the major search engines. They ask you make a small donation--I did $20

Susan

Well, the key would be to get MSN and Yahoo to deliver the same quality search results as Google. Right now, there is no comparison. I rank #1 for the search tearm "Aurora IL Real Estate" - you know what page ranks as #1? Not my index I assure you - it's a tiny page filled with a single image that I load into my center inline frame for my nav feature. Why is it ranking so high? Because MSN does not penalize for lack of content. That's why you see pages with zero content and only a couple keywords always ranking #1 on MSN. Plus since MSN doesn't have a sandbox, it ranks sites immediately - it's easy to get a high ranking. In fact, it's not hard to rank #1 in MSN for pretty much any keyword. But what you send viewers to is not very good for lead capture in most cases. For example, right now, the page that is ranked #1 in MSN for me is just a small picture of a house. Not very thrilling.

Google is No.1 right now but you cannot sideline Yahoo and MSN , they too are giving Google a very tight fight