...that from May 2007 to November, its satisfaction rating rose from 837 to 878, vaulting it past both Google and Ask.com. Yahoo credits its new Search Assist feature, which walks users through refining a search query, for the boost.

Keynote uses a panel of 2000 representative users to study how the major search engines stack up in terms of performance, relevance and customer satisfaction. The report also looked at how the major engines performed in terms of providing search assistance and suggestions. Keynote found that since launching Search Assist, our ranking jumped by 41 points to 878, taking us from third to first place in this category.

Recent Compete market share numbers show that while all four of Yahoos competitors increased their volume of search queries over 30% in the last year (with Google up 51%), Yahoos volume was up a practically non-existant 0.3%. Even if Yahoos users are more satisfied, Yahoo is failing to attract new users, or at least convince existing ones to search more. Happy customers are nice, but apparently no one is spreading the word.

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