Among the three e-business industries – social media, online news and opinion, and search engines and information – only social media shows improved customer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI®) E-Business Study 2021-2022.

User satisfaction with social media inches up 1.4% to an ACSI score of 71 (out of 100), while news and opinion websites slip 1.4% to 73. Users remain most satisfied with search engines and information despite a 1.3% dip to 75.

“As Americans’ appetite for media consumption has lessened in recent months, we’re seeing satisfaction with all major online news outlets decline or stagnate, with little differentiation among the biggest sites,” says Forrest Morgeson, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University and Director of Research Emeritus at the ACSI. “While several social media sites stumble, Twitter jumps up 11%, recovering from its sharp drop last year to post the biggest improvement thus far in 2022.”

Pinterest falters, no longer alone atop social media, while Twitter recovers in a big way

Pinterest tumbles 3% to an ACSI score of 76, now sharing the social media lead with YouTube, which is unchanged from last year.

TikTok sits alone in second place after improving 1% to 73, followed by the smaller group of social media sites, which slides 3% to 72. Reddit and Wikipedia fall 1% and 3%, respectively, to 71, ahead of Snapchat (unchanged) and Tumblr (up 1%) at 70 apiece.

Twitter rebounds following a massive decline last year, surging 11% to 68. LinkedIn shares the same score after sliding 1% year over year. Instagram slips 3% to an ACSI score of 67, while Facebook takes last place after dropping 2% to 61.

News and opinion websites stumble, as satisfaction with FOXNews.com and CNN.com falls further

Once again, the group of smaller news and opinion sites tops the rest of the industry despite remaining unchanged at an ACSI score of 76.

FOXNews.com falters again, sliding 1% to a new record-low score of 71. USATODAY.com, down 1%, ties FOXNews.com for the second year in a row.

Three news sites score 70 each: HuffPost (down 1%), NBCNews.com (down 1%), and NYTimes.com (unchanged).

ABCNews.com, steady at 69, is joined at the bottom of the industry by CNN.com, down 3% year over year.

Smaller search engines surpass Google for industry lead

The group of smaller search engines surges 3% to an ACSI score of 79, officially supplanting Google as the industry leader among search engines and information sites. The latter stumbles 5% to 75, falling into a tie with MSN (up 4%) for second place.

Answers improves 3% to 73, just ahead of Yahoo! (down 1% to 72) and Ask (down 1% to 71). Bing backtracks 1% to 70, slumping into a last-place tie with AOL, which improves 1% year over year.

The ACSI E-Business Study 2021-2022 is based on interviews with 5,499 customers, chosen at random and contacted via email between July 2021 and June 2022. Follow the ACSI on LinkedIn and Twitter at @theACSI.

No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the data and information in this release without the express prior written consent of ACSI LLC.

About the ACSI

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI^®) has been a national economic indicator for 25 years. It measures and analyzes customer satisfaction with more than 400 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors, including various services of federal and local government agencies. Reported on a scale of 0 to 100, scores are based on data from interviews with roughly 500,000 customers annually. For more information, visit www.theacsi.org.

ACSI and its logo are Registered Marks of American Customer Satisfaction Index LLC.

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