Ask Double Faults During The US Open
|
Written By Reprise Media | August 29, 2006 | Share This
|
|
Our of curiosity, I flipped on the US Open last night, to catch a few minutes of Andre Agassi’s ‘last match ever’ (which he ended up winning in a squeaker, in case you hadn’t heard)
Of course, it was foolish of me to try to relax. Every time I think I’m relaxed, and out of search […]
Our of curiosity, I flipped on the US Open last night, to catch a few minutes of Andre Agassi’s ‘last match ever’ (which he ended up winning in a squeaker, in case you hadn’t heard)
Of course, it was foolish of me to try to relax. Every time I think I’m relaxed, and out of search mode for the day, it keeps pulling me back in. Case in point: About fifteen minutes after turning on the Open, I saw one of Ask.com’s recent TV commercials.
Out of curiosity, I picked up my laptop and opened up Ask.com to see whether or not they had any interesting information about the Open. Their Smart Answers product is typically really good for sporting events, often displaying real-time scores, stats and links to related information.
My search for “U.S. Open tennis” yielded…dubious results. Check it out for yourself:
As expected, the US Open Smart Answer was really useful, featuring relevant, timely info and links to the official site, schedule, history & player rankings. Then the requisite paid listings from our friendly neighborhood ticket scalpers. Followed by? Nothing. No organic listings at all, just a notification that the site couldn’t handle the current volume of searches. Figuring that I might have just hit a bug, I performed several more searches, including some that were completely unrelated to the Open.
Of course, the site is back to normal this morning. Then again, the company isn’t advertising on a high-profile sporting event this morning. It’s an unfortunate misstep, especially considering that Ask’s search results are generally really good these days. I wonder: How many people saw the ad, went to the site (for the first time in a long time) and had a similar experience? Would you be motivated to go back? This kind of performance will definitely not help them catch Google. (Or Yahoo! and MSN for that matter)
Topics: Search: News |
I love tennis, it is nice to watch & unfortunately one has to mute the action as commentators talk constantly and miss the playing. Today while Blake was playing Russell, McEnroe
(John) talked for 15 minutes, really….also the stupid interviews
while play is going on is terrible.
Thank goodness for the mute button!!!!