Summer Olympics Internet Coverage, Search Trends

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The last Olympic games were the most widely covered Olympics ever †mostly thanks to the internet. For those people who couldn’t watch the games on TV, or didn’t want to wait for the prime time broadcast, the internet was the source of information on how their favorite countries were doing.

And major search engines were all over it. People could get everything they wanted to know from Google, Yahoo and Bing, as opposed to sifting through potentially cumbersome information on CNN.com or other major news sources.

Each search engine presented the information in their own unique way, in an attempt to snag a bigger portion of the internet user pie. Yahoo posted event results on their front page †including medal counts by country, without making users type anything in the search bar. Google provided stats, and usage information through their blog. All of the engines ranked Olympic results number one in a search index to provide users with the information they wanted quickly. In fact, most results were integrated right into their SERPs (search engine results pages).

Even ...
... looking back at the summer Olympics in China, those games were very widely publicized thanks to the internet and the various search engines, despite China’s attempts to censor information and results. The internet made the games available to everyone.

Even things like scandals and breaking news items were immediately available thanks to things like social media integration into search indexes. For example, American figure skater Johnny Weir was a virtual nobody among the general public, but after the Olympics his Twitter followers exploded even though the skater finished sixth overall. His flamboyant nature and showmanship prompted a firestorm of comments and lit up the internet with searches and queries related to him.

Additionally, social results were integrated into SERPs as well. For the 2010 games, search engines were just beginning to provide up to the minute information about the games and what was going on. In Vancover, when Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili died, the internet was inundated with Tweets and status updates about the tragic news that rocked the 2010 Winter Olympics. Subsequently queries skyrocketed, and people were able to get all the information they wanted, immediately.

People received information in a way they never had before. And it’s still evolving and changing. So what can people expect for the 2012 Summer Olympic games in London? More of everything. As more of the search engines integrate social media more fully into their search indexes, people can expect up to the second information right from the sidelines of London’s games. Journalists will tweet results as they happen, bringing the Olympic experience that much closer. People will update their Facebook statuses to reflect Olympic happenings, and all that information will be included on pages like Yahoo, Bing and Google.

It can be expected for 2012 that each of the search engines will take a slightly different approach, but all will be innovative and provide users with the most up to date information possible, for those that just can’t wait to see the results on television, or maybe don’t have television coverage of certain events.

Search engines revolutionized the way the Olympics were covered, and you can expect to see that trend continue in 2012.