Big Upset: Live Search & Ask.com Win Kentucky Derby Search

May 4, 2009 at 11:49pm ET by Matt McGee

The major search engines are often quick to point out occasions when they’ve done a good job anticipating searchers’ needs and providing instant answers to search queries right in the search results; see this Live Search announcement about instant Oscar Award results as an example.

But when they miss an opportunity? That’s someone else’s job. And over the weekend, Rick Duncan did just that when he compared Google, Yahoo, Live Search, and Ask.com to see how they handled the search phrase, who won the kentucky derby.

The results?

Duncan says Live Search was the winner from his Sunday morning experiment, barely edging out Ask.com. I’d say they both win because they answered the query (and because I’m not interested in Mint Julep recipes). Have a look and decide for yourself:

live

ask

Google and Yahoo provided no such quick answers, but Google at least had a result halfway down the page that showed the name of the winning horse.

All of the search engines provide quick answers at sports events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics. But it’s a mystery why Google and Yahoo overlooked thoroughbred horse racing’s equivalent of those major events this weekend.

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

See more articles by Matt McGee >

Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:

See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Search Features: Shortcuts sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!

3 COMMENTS ON Big Upset: Live Search & Ask.com Win Kentucky Derby Search

Matt Cutts, May 5th, 2009 at 1:25 am ET:

I’ll just point out that if you leave out the hard-coded “one box” results that someone added manually to Ask and Microsoft, Google was the first to have the answer in the algorithmic/crawled results, at least according to the images in the original post. :)

Danny Sullivan, May 5th, 2009 at 4:39 am ET:
Premium member since 12/2008

Fair enough, Google does get two crawled results that mention the winner in their titles. But the results from 2005 and 2008 aren’t exactly poster children for freshness.

More important, Google should do more hard coding for queries like these, I’d say. I don’t think those searching really care how you got the right answer to the top of the page. I doubt they’re thinking, only Google did it with the algorithm. I’m pretty sure they’re just jazzed to get the right answer as early as possible on the page, however it happens.