Google Snubs & Bing Embraces The 2015 Rugby World Cup
Bing provides a special area in search with standings and information for fans. Google does a special logo, but only in some countries.
Photo from Rugby World Cup site.
Looking to get the latest information on the 2015 Rugby World Cup, which began today and runs through October? Don’t google it. Bing it — because Bing’s got scores, line-ups and information while Google has nothing.
Search for “rugby world cup” on Bing, and you get the latest scores of any matches:
That includes a link to the current standings. You can also click from the box to various days to see upcoming matches, along with Bing’s prediction of who will win:
Google has no special display like this. Google has done this type of thing for other national and international events, but rugby doesn’t appear to earn that respect.
Google earlier snubbed the FIFA Women’s World Cup in not providing a special display on desktop and iOS devices. Android users did get a special display. But for the Rugby World Cup, there’s not even anything special for Android.
Google’s also not giving the event a special doodle logo on the Google.com home page. Instead, Google is showing this special logo in some of the participating countries only:
Countries in the tournament that got the logo on their country-specific sites are: Argentina, Australia, UK (England, Scotland, Wales), France, Italy, New Zealand, Romania and South Africa.
These countries in the tournament didn’t get the logo: Canada, Ireland (unified Ireland / Northern Ireland Irish team), Georgia, Japan, Namibia, Tonga, Uruguay and the United States.
The US, of course, lacks its own country-specific site, but Google.com tends to double as that. Fiji and Samoa also didn’t get a logo because, as best I can tell, they don’t have country-specific Google versions.
It might be that this logo or related ones will come to some of the other countries when they actually have matches. But plenty didn’t have matches today that did get the logo.
We’ve asked Google about this and will update, if we hear more. Also, Twitter has rolled out country-specific emoji for the event. Read more about that here: Twitter Unleashes Special Hashtag Emoji For The 2015 Rugby World Cup.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land
About the author
