What Search Engine Do Google and Yahoo Employees Prefer?

Google may be the search engine with the most mainstream popularity at the moment, but what search engine do the people in the know - the actual employees of the industry-leading search engines - use when they want to perform a search? Do Yahoo employees Google? Do Googlers prefer Yahoo? A recent blog entry revealed some interesting answers.

Nathan Weinberg of Inside Google dared to ask: "What search engine do search engine companies use?"

He stirred up some controversy when he posted some VisitorVille statistics in a recent blog entry. The stats indicate that Google is used 100% of the time by Google employees. Meanwhile, 68.9% of Yahoo employees reportedly use Yahoo, leaving a margin of about 29.8% who use Google for their search needs.

Nathan's entry immediately sparked discussion at the search industry's most popular online forums, including Search Engine Watch, where members began wondering: "Should Yahoo employees search elsewhere?" One member stated, "Search is free. If you can't even give it away to your employees, there is a problem. Maybe not a big one, but a problem none-the-less."

"I don't believe the search numbers," stated Jeremy Zawodny in a blog entry of his own. Jeremy was quick to point out contradictions in the data aggregation. But the strength behind his argument came when he noted "that 100% Google figure ... seems to imply that Google never bothers to check out the competition. Is that really true? I know for a fact that it's not."

So how did Nathan respond to Jeremy's criticism?

"VisitorVille compiles the data through visitors to the websites who contract it for user data. That means all of the data is based on sites visited through search engines. In turn, that means that only successful searches are counted, not test searches, because test searches rarely result in a click through. This means that Google employees who search for websites all use Google, and they only use other engines for testing, while Yahoo employees do use Google to find stuff."

Nathan, who believes his findings represent a lack of passion among Yahoo employees, concluded, "Nothing shows problems quite like companies that have products so unpopular that their own employees use don't them."

On the other hand, search engine optimization expert Andy Beal was quick to note that, "Nathan believes this data suggests that Yahoo and MSN employees are not happy with their own product. That may well be true. Then again, I'm sitting here in an Overture shirt and not a WebSourced one. Doesn't mean I'm not passionate about my company..."

Point taken, Andy.

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