A new survey finds that the majority of Americans are spending more time looking for services online than they did five years ago, and they're frustrated about it.
Why we care. Search engines are meant to help users find the information they want and need, and this study found that subpar search engine results and experiences can leave users unable to accomplish their tasks and left them frustrated.
Search engine frustration. Respondents were asked which part of the process of searching for services online they found most frustrating. The top three were:
- Check the search results: 26%
- Find the right search terms: twenty two%
- Visit multiple websites: twenty one%
My response: These are all problems that Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other answer engines will one day (soon?) be able to solve, but the full potential of generative AI in search has yet to be realized.
Search further. The majority of respondents said they look at search results more frequently than they did five years ago.
- more: 54% (19% “increased significantly” and 35% “increased slightly”).
- few: 27% (19% “a little less” and 8% “much less”).
- almost the same: It's 20%.
The majority of respondents also said that they spend a lot of time searching when looking for services online.
- More time: 51% (16% “much more” and 35% “somewhat more”).
- Time is short: 28% (18% “a little less” and 10% “much less”).
- About the same time: It's 21%.
My response: Users are increasingly frustrated with Google's search quality, providing further evidence that this isn't just our assumption. Google says people love its AI Summary and search results, and that increased use of search is due to AI Summary, but is it because users are digging deeper or because they can't find the right answer?
PPC ads are less relevant. Only 12% of respondents said search ads were relevant to them. PPC ads barely beat radio in the study at 10%.
- More respondents said they encounter more relevant ads on six other channels: TV (41%), YouTube (37%), Facebook (32%), Instagram (32%), TikTok (19%) and websites (18%).
My response: While we were surprised to see TV at number one, we were less surprised to see multiple social platforms now ranking highly, especially considering that more users are turning to social media for search and discovery, likely due to growing frustration with ads in search results.
what else. In the SERPs, 35% of respondents said they would skip the ad (presumably by scrolling past it) and go to the website (organic) results. Additionally, they found that:
- 33% look for sources/companies they recognize by name (improving brand awareness).
- 33% want results with high star ratings.
Not really a surprise. Other notable findings:
- 30% of respondents believe that services that appear higher in search results are more relevant.
- 46% of respondents said that having “trustworthy” results would make their search experience more enjoyable.
- 86% of respondents believe they can almost always or most of the time distinguish between organic and paid search results.
- 47% believe it has become easier to distinguish between organic and paid search results, 37% believe it has become harder, and 16% believe it has remained the same compared to five years ago.
but. It's also quite possible that some, or even most, of the survey respondents are not all that tech-savvy.
About the data. The survey polled 1,000 U.S. adults to ensure national representation in terms of gender, age and region. The survey was conducted in late February by Scorpion, a provider of digital marketing and technology solutions, in partnership with independent market research firm Dynata.