Now that the Olympics are over, I decided it would be time to take a look at how every nation did at the Games. Checking the 3 majors search engines for the word “Olympics”, it appears that Yahoo dropped the ball on this one. Live and Google produce relevant medal count “one boxes”, while Yahoo just gives news. Looks like Live Search did the best out of the 3 search engines on this one and overall for the Olympics:

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Last week we saw that Google had done a better job at serving up Olympics-related words with events listings in a one box format. However, now that the Games are underway, they appear to have fallen behind both Yahoo and Live Search who are giving users relevant results, not just algorithm-produced links. As Search Engine Watch noted, when searching for the name of an Olympic athlete, even for one as big of a deal as Michael Phelps, Google fails to deliver the results that users are looking for.

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As I looked up when the swimming events in Beijing were going to occur, I noticed that the first results that appear in Google are a one box with an Olympic swimming icon alongside the upcoming swimming events. This is one of the ways that Google remains useful: by being relevant. It is not enough to provide results, it is important to give the results that people are looking for.

Then I noticed that Yahoo had followed suit. Of course there was a paid advertising above Yahoo’s one box, making is a big less attractive to click on, especially since the events listed were not clickable. Score: Google 1-0 Yahoo.