The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an indicator that tracks a variety of economic sectors, industries, companies and government services, reporting scores on a scale of 0 to 100 in customer evaluation of the quality of goods and services provided.

Facebook has been a mainstay in the ACSI since 2010, but this year four new social networks were added to the mix – Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.

Twitter scored a lowly 64 in its debut, beating Facebook, which fell five points from last year to 61, and LinkedIn, which scored a 63. Pinterest rated an impressive 69 in its first showing.

And your winner? That would be Google+, whose 78 left every other social channel in the dust and beat social networking overall by some nine points.

Yeah, I’m scratching my head as well. Here’s your table.

Facebook was down almost 8 percent year-on-year, and the ASCI say most of the blame lies with the introduction of Timeline.

“Facebook and Google+ are competing on two critical fronts: customer experience and market penetration. Google+ handily wins the former, and Facebook handily wins the latter, for now,” said Larry Freed, President and CEO of ForeSee. “It’s worth asking how much customer satisfaction matters for Facebook, given its unrivaled 800 million user base. But I expect Google to leverage its multiple properties and mobile capabilities to attract users at a rapid pace. If Facebook doesn’t feel the pressure to improve customer satisfaction now, that may soon change.”

Social networking as a sector fell by one point, or 1.6 percent, from 2011. Google’s search engine rated highest amongst all entries in the e-business sector, scoring an impressive 82.

(Source: ASCI. Consumer satisfaction image via Shutterstock.)