YHOO

For those interested in the search engine wars, particularly Bing vs. Google, then you might be interested in a recent usability study done by Catalyst in New York. While they used a statistically insignificant sample size of only 12 people (all who had been Google users beforehand), they did come out with some interesting anecdotal data.

First of all, 4 out of 12 actually said they preferred Bing, with the remaining 8 preferring Google, but apparently because Google was the search engine they were familiar with. Second of all, Bing was actually preferred on most metrics, with Google winning out simply because of familiarity. In terms of search relevance the two engines appear to have tied. Catalyst also studied which parts of the page caught users' attention and found that Bing appeared to get much more eye-time right where one would presumably want it, over the top search results.

One more interesting note, in addition to our previous thoughts, from Citi's June 17th search market share flash... interestingly Twitter has begun to show up on the radar in terms of search market share!

Search volume on Twitter in May was 30.1MM, (.001% U.S. market share), with 4.2MM searchers, and 39.4MM Result Pages, exceeding the 22.2MM searches conducted on Time Warner Cable.

Sure their share is tiny, but it's brand new, growing, and has a passionate user base as opposed to "use any default search box" types. They've already beaten Time Warner Cable, perhaps one day they break past Ask.com's sub-4% share? Very early days, but something to think about.