Engine Sports! What the Search Bigwigs are Doing for the Big Games
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Written By Reprise Media | June 9, 2006 | Share This
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FIFA World Cup fever is sweeping the world! Usually, we’d barely be able to tell (as we’re here in the USA), but thanks to the engines, we’ll probably see more about the World Cup this year than ever before, even by accident…hey, America even appears to be in it this time. Go team!
As Danny Sullivan is in the UK, he’s got a closer up view of this whole football soccer phenomenon; he’s also got screenshots of what the engines are doing for the occasion. Google, as ever, starts with a special logo. They’re also using their front page to advertise a World Cup module for the Personalized Homepage; plug it in to keep track of Live scores, scheduled Matches, and overall tournament Standings, all from handy tabs. Watching the little widget update simulates most of the excitement of a live soccer match.
As for the other engines, Ask.com is getting into the act as well; its homepage is adorned with tiny flags from all 32 participating countries - click on one to get a smart answer with all kinds of info. And although Yahoo! didn’t make any visual modifications, they are also running smart answers, against World Cup-related keywords.
But if you ask us, that’s enough of that. We’ve got plenty of red-blooded (North) American sports going on right now, too. Why, we’re in the midst of the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA Finals have just begun, and the Belmont Stakes (the final contest in horse racing’s Triple Crown) is running tomorrow. What are the engines doing for these prestigious events?
Well…not quite as much. We can forgive them for ignoring hockey; after all, the NHL almost obliterated itself with a year-long strike. Still, Ask is running smart answers and headlines from the latest game (including a slick news photo). Yahoo has smart answers also, including the latest Stanley Cup score, and even tells you when the game was played.
The engines are a little like people when it comes to sports; they’ve all got favorites. MSN, dormant on hockey searches, leaps into action the second you mention basketball. In addition, searching by an NBA Finals team produces a smart answer from the latest game, listing the score by quarter. Yahoo is less enthusiastic about the NBA, but also gives you a smart answer when you search by team.
And The Belmont? Sadly, horse racing has gone from being the Sport of Kings to the Sport of Those Weird Guys Who Hang Around Outside Off-Track Betting. It doesn’t help that Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was felled with an injury at the Preakness, precluding the possibility of a Triple Crown champ. Accordingly, the engines are paying modest attention to the Belmont. Yahoo’s search results link to a pretty thorough page of Belmont coverage. Ask, meanwhile, offers links to the Triple Crown Wikipedia entry and the latest news, but that’s about it.
Hmm…maybe there’s something to this soccer stuff after all. We might try to catch one of these, how you say, ‘matches’ this weekend. Wish us luck.
Topics: Search: News |