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Google still dominates Keynote Benchmark study

The latest Keynote Customer Experience study on search engines showed Yahoo edging out Google for top marks in search assistance & suggestions.

Visitors to Yahoo who turn to the search box to find what they need have the added benefit of Search Assist. The technology suggests likely choices to auto-complete the search box as the searcher types.

The feature may be doing for Yahoo what its management has yet to achieve: inroads against Google and its search industry dominance. The Yahoo Search blog touted findings by The Keynote Benchmark, indicating Search Assist helped Yahoo edge Google in one study category.

Though it's a small step in one category, it could mean more in the long run. Keynote put forth the suggestion that Google may not be invincible after all:

With nearly three times the market share of its nearest competitor, Google is seemingly invincible. But companies that overbearingly dominate their category, particularly when it’s a technology category, are vulnerable to category-redefining innovation (just Google “iPhone”).

And then there is the phenomenon, especially in America, of consumers seeking alternatives when they feel like they are captive, even if voluntarily, to an industry giant. This last factor in particular has opened the door for an aggressive competitor like Yahoo! to recapture some of the many users it has lost over the past few years to Google.

The latest Keynote Systems Customer Experience Rankings for search confirm that Yahoo! is, indeed, achieving noticeable improvements in user experience and beginning to close the gap with Google in several key search experience drivers.

"Taking a step back, I think the Keynote study provides some nice 3rd party validation that by focusing directly on a key user need and building a solution that addresses it pays dividends to our users," Yahoo's Michael Kronthal said on the Search blog.

Given enough time, Yahoo may even be able to build the unthinkable: a search experience that carves up some of Google's share for itself.