I’d say that is the #1 advantage of Yahoo over Google search.

My post was really intended to point out what I thought John was omitting: that Google offers more relevant information regarding sports games than Yahoo does.

So Yahoo tells you when one game starts (and, come on, this is only a minor hiccup on Google’s part). But Google tells you when every single game starts, and what the score was for the previous game, for almost all major sports, even European soccer leagues.

You’re out of luck with Yahoo.

I watch Arsenal games on most weekends, and I know that if I type in Arsenal FC I’ll see when the next game starts. So naturally when I wanted to know when the super bowl started, I typed in a team name. And I got what I wanted.

John was only painting part of the picture. So yes Yahoo might be better for the super bowl, but Google is more consistent for sports games in general.

(Actually, Yahoo offers a lot of cool sports features, especially for soccer, but I’m talking specifically about SERPs).

Can I, just for the record, state that this attitude galls me?

What did you say, again, Patrick? “You’re searching for the wrong term“.

So the solution to this problem, Patrick, is to blame the user?

This is what we have search engines for. We have them so help us not only find information, but find out how to ask the right questions. It’s the search engine’s job to say, “Did you mean to search for [Arizona Cardinals]“, if that really is the best query to use to find super bowl start times.

And you call this approach, which is to blame the user, a “more useful and durable” approach?

Unbelievable.

Vish makes the same point that I’m making. I totally agree. It’s brand, and nothing else, that is causing you to believe that it’s the user’s fault, and not Google’s.

And I’m sure Google is not trying in the least bit to correct that perception.

Me? I call that approach useless.

again – yahoo wins altho via a different method

If you searched for “Arizona Cardinals” or “Pittsburgh Steelers” (before the game) it told you when the next game (i.e. the Super Bowl) would start.

If you search for those terms now, it tells you the score of the game.

So maybe there’s a learning curve here, but I’m not a huge sports fan and I realized this rather quickly. I am a soccer fan (Arsenal-supporter) and Google even has listings for EPL and La Liga games (e.g. search: “FC Barcelona”).

Google’s approach seems much more useful and durable.

May be you want to write a post, on how big three have started differentiating from each other. You just found only one example. The days when one was uniformly better than others are over.

I remember when Google added features like the ability to search for a UPS tracking number and have it take you directly to the UPS tracking page, and it made me use Google even more. It’s just the idea that in addition to finding obscure answers to some random question, you can also ask the simple questions and get quick and easy answers.

With quick answers like that, Google (and apparently now Yahoo!) become the final destination for answers to all of your questions, rather than just the starting point.