2 ms·

These were done around 2004-2006 IIRC, I don't know if the brand impact today is the same as it was back then. I'll see if I can find publications, but I think

These were done around 2004-2006 IIRC, I don't know if the brand impact today is the same as it was back then. I'll see if I can find publications, but I think most, if not all of it, was not published. Even when you told people that we were substituting in different search engines and the presentation and layout was not indicative of where the results came from, putting a Google logo on the page produced a measurable difference in behaviour -far more so than changes to the results themselves (admittedly, we never presented ridiculous results, like say results from an entirely different query or a just random landing pages, but we did present them with, for example, purely paid search results). In general though, consumer confirmation bias is not that surprising, right? Particularly with technology brands, it's pretty well established that confidence in the brand leads one to be more likely to attribute failure to one's own "mistakes" and therefore invest in further exploration of the product and/or modifying one's interactions with it. It also diminishes one's belief that another product would produce better results, therefore diminishing interest in exploring alternatives; it also leads one to perceive a product's performance as "better" when it is exactly the same.

JohnBooty 6y ago
It makes 100% sense to me that perceived quality would be influenced by a person's feelings towards the brand. In fact I'd be shocked when that's not the case!
phire 6y ago
I actually have no idea how good the search results from other search engines were in 2004-2006. I was exclusively google by then and I'm willing to admit it's entirely plausible it's competitors had similar results. But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s. A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag. It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better.
- cbsmith 6y ago
  > But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s. Yup, I would say it was better through most a good chunk of 2002, which garnered it [checks notes]... about 16% market share at that point. If you include the AOL traffic, that'd be 21%. To put that in perspective, MSN's search market share grew by more than that entire share just in 2003. > A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag. Yup, the impact of that UX was huge. It really improved conversion rates. Everyone else figured that out pretty quickly and adopted that. > It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better. Really, it was the ranking function. As their competitors rapidly discovered, having a broader set of sites actually made having a good ranking function so much more crucial.

JohnBooty 6y ago

It makes 100% sense to me that perceived quality would be influenced by a person's feelings towards the brand. In fact I'd be shocked when that's not the case!

phire 6y ago

I actually have no idea how good the search results from other search engines were in 2004-2006. I was exclusively google by then and I'm willing to admit it's entirely plausible it's competitors had similar results. But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s. A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag. It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better.

cbsmith 6y ago
> But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s. Yup, I would say it was better through most a good chunk of 2002, which garnered it [checks notes]... about 16% market share at that point. If you include the AOL traffic, that'd be 21%. To put that in perspective, MSN's search market share grew by more than that entire share just in 2003. > A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag. Yup, the impact of that UX was huge. It really improved conversion rates. Everyone else figured that out pretty quickly and adopted that. > It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better. Really, it was the ranking function. As their competitors rapidly discovered, having a broader set of sites actually made having a good ranking function so much more crucial.