• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 19, 2017

Nearly 50% of respondents to a survey conducted by Fivesight Research said they use a search engine more frequently today compared with a year ago. About 43% report their use as more or less the same. Only 6% say they use search engines less today than a year ago.

What makes this survey of 800 U.S. consumers interesting is that the boutique agency was created to follow trends related to Google and Alphabet portfolio companies. This survey, conducted in March 2017 via smartphone using the Pollfish online survey platform, also analyzed the most important factors influencing their selection of a search products.

Without a doubt, the search engine with the ability to provide the best answer to an individual question based on personal experience and the ability to connect the dots through machine learning ranked highest. Speed of the response came in at No. 2. Keep my data private followed at no. 3; results are current, No. 4; easy to enter my search, No. 5; and understand my search query, No. 6. The scores ranged from 3.59 as the highest to 3.39 as the lowest.

Just as strange, 43% of Windows users have changed their default search engine, followed by 36% of Mac users and 28% of Chrome users.

When it came to searching on a computer, the operating system Windows ranked highest at 72%, Mac followed with 15%, and Chromebook trailed with 7%. Not surprisingly, Google ranked 79% on a desktop vs. Bing at 5%. Yahoo event came in at 7% on desktop and laptop. Google also led on smartphones with 84%, followed by 6% with Siri, 2% on Yahoo, and 1% for Bing. Other search engines that got a mention were AOL at 1%, DuckDuckGo at 0.4%, and Ask at 0.3%.

Overall, nearly 80% of respondents who switched their search engine selected Google, regardless of their desktop operating system, 8% selected Bing, 7% selected Yahoo, and 5% selected "other. " It actually makes the whole Russian Android Antitrust settlement questionable.

Google's antitrust battle with the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) led by Russian search rival Yandex came to a close Monday. The company reached an out-of-court deal that included Google agreeing to develop a tool that allows users to choose a default search engine on Android devices -- no longer demanding exclusivity for its applications.