WebProNews

It’s a safe bet that Google’s employees aren’t too happy; Yahoo has, for the first time ever, beaten them in the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey.

Granted, “ever” isn’t a particularly long time for these companies or this report - as bigmouthmedia notes, the ACSI has only been around since 2002.  And Google wasn’t exactly walloped - with a rating of 78, it was just barely edged out by Yahoo’s 79.  Still, some of the survey’s other findings indicate that a critical point has been reached.

“Even more important than Yahoo’s first lead over Google is the trend of their scores moving in opposite directions,” stated Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results (the sponsor of the ACSI report).  Yahoo’s score rose by nearly four percent in the past year, while Google’s decreased by about the same amount.

“Since the ACSI is a leading indicator of financial performance on the macro scale and at the company level, we may see a real turnaround for Yahoo! in the next year,” Freed continued.

A similar prediction might apply to Ask, considering that its four-point increase qualifies as the year’s biggest.  “Ask.com is making huge inroads on the other competitors in the portal and search engine category,” said Freed. “And it has done this despite a second relaunch this year, which was apparently carried off so well that it didn’t have the usual backlash of dropping customer satisfaction scores.  Ask.com has mastered the crucial mix of evolution and revolution.”

And Google has apparently gotten the hang of goofing up the ACSI survey.