ESPN loses if Google wins
Derrick Eckardt of RotoNation recently came across sports scores included at the top of Google Mobile search results (sports scores searches are dramatically higher on mobile phones than from desktops on a relative basis, so it makes sense Google would experiment with these results on their Mobile version first).
This is great for the user as they save a click (and the time required to load a new page, which is significant on mobile phones) to get their answers.
ESPN clearly loses out as they have the top ranked result and would have garnered this traffic.
Google is clearly becoming more and more of a destination site…to the detriment of ESPN and other sites.
Sports is the worst vertical for Google
According to the latest Hitwise traffic figures for the top search engines, Google accounts for 8.81% of traffic to sports websites, the lowest total of any category for Google. To be fair to Google, they have done very little to improve their results for sports focused searches…yet. Most of the people I talk to rarely use Google to find sports news and information because the results provided aren’t what sports fans are looking for.
I don’t expect Google to stay out of sports forever (77 million on-line users is large enough to attract some attention from Google) and Derrick Ekhardt at RotoNation reported here and here that Google has already added sports scores to its Mobile search results (they obtain these scores from an unnamed third party that I know very well). I am sure there is more to come from Google. The real question is how far will Google go to change their search results to accomodate sports content and stats and how deep will their content be. PlayerSearch will never have the brand or mindshare that Google has (does any on-line brand?), but if we can keep our search results 10x better than theirs for sports focused searches and we can make it easy for users to search PlayerSearch from their favorite sports websites, then we have a fighting chance.
Good coverage from TechCrunch here.
