Watching The World Series Through Google, Bing & Yahoo’s Eyes

The first game of the World Series is underway, as I write this. Curious about how it’s going, I turned to the search engines to see if they’d knock it out of the ballpark with some instant answers. Yep, if you’re a San Francisco Giants fan. Not so much, if you’re a Texas Rangers fan. […]

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The first game of the World Series is underway, as I write this. Curious about how it’s going, I turned to the search engines to see if they’d knock it out of the ballpark with some instant answers. Yep, if you’re a San Francisco Giants fan. Not so much, if you’re a Texas Rangers fan.

Google & The World Series

Batting first is Google, where I did a search for giants, as a Giants fan might to get the score:

Giants 2 Google

Nice. Just what I wanted, the current score right at the top of the page, where the first arrow is pointing at.

You Got Footballolate In My Baseballbutter!

Notice the second arrow. Baseball’s San Francisco Giants, meet football’s New York Giants. Football fans are looking for standings, too, and there’s a direct answer being provided for them.

Sort of. It doesn’t appear that there was a football game tonight, so I’m not really sure what the 5-2 stands for. But I’m sure football fans know (and are slapping their heads and calling me an idiot, as they read this).

By the way, when I repeated that search on Google, I discovered that the baseball standings oddly moved down the page:

Giants

This happened even when I used a different browser, so it wasn’t related to Google perhaps seeing me search again and deciding to change things up. C’mon Google. When the baseball game is on, it should be at the top.

Ranger Danger

Life’s not so happy if you’re a Rangers fan of the baseball variety, who entered rangers to get the score:

Rangers

Shown at the top is the score for the Atlanta Thrashers versus the New York Rangers, from their hockey game tonight. Scores for the World Series match are nowhere to be seen.

For Baseball & World Series, A Changeup

Both baseball and world series are other searches baseball fans might be doing tonight. What do they see? A new format, a nice one giving the overall World Series standings, plus the score of the current game and time of the next one:

World Series

At the end of Google’s inning, I’d call it 3 out of 4.

Bing & The World Series

Time to bring on Bing. Like Google, a search for giants brings up the current score:

Bing Giants

I like Bing’s display much better than Google’s. It’s easier to read, plus you get the current pitcher, batter and last play shown.

Rangers Robbed Again

For rangers, Bing strikes out, just like Google. You get New York Rangers hockey standings, no baseball:

Bing Rangers

Series Standings

For baseball and world series, as with Google, there’s a different format that gives standings for the World Series overall, not the score from the current game:

Bing World Series

In this case, I think I prefer Google’s format a bit more. I found it easier to read with all the information listed in one single column.

Bing’s score, like Google’s, is 3 for 4.

Yahoo & The World Series

How are things at Yahoo? For giants, there’s a nicely formatted score box:

Yahoo Giants

I like how you can see which bases are loaded, though I miss the inning-by-inning rundown.

Rangers Finally Win

For rangers, success!

Yahoo Rangers

I Got The Accordion Blues

In a search for baseball, there’s one of the new accordion boxes that Yahoo hopes will draw people in. The information shown isn’t what I’d say most people searching right now would want, which is the current score for the Major League Baseball’s World Series:

Yahoo Baseball

Another accordion box appears for world series, and it’s similarly disappointing:

Yahoo World Series

Too bad. I thought Yahoo would be 4 for 4. It’s more 2 for 4. But for Rangers fans, I think Yahoo deserves some extra credit.

Google, Bing — Spare Some Love For The Rangers

Rangers fans looking for scores on Google and Bing were pretty much out of luck, if they used their team’s own name. A Silicon Valley bias?

Google’s based in Mountain View, so the SF Giants are their hometown team. Bing’s based near Seattle, so you could argue their not going to favor either team. But they’ve got a Silicon Valley office, and being based on the West Coast, they might be thinking more about the Giants than the Rangers.

I doubt there’s any formal bias in action here, but they both should get it together before game two. And Yahoo, dump those accordion boxes.

Postscript: Checking back at Bing, I noticed there are scores for a search on Rangers that sometimes show, further down on the page:

Ranges On Bing

At first, I thought I’d missed this. But after doing some repeat searches, it wouldn’t always show. Disturbingly, I also found that sometimes when searching for Giants, the display I liked above did NOT appear. But I also searched just after the game ended, so that might have been a factor (though it really shouldn’t, not just minutes after the game). Here’s hoping Bing can make these appear consistently.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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