Like many of us I watched the 46st Super Bowl yesterday. And backing the right team, if I may say so.
By the way, I backed the New York Giants on the wholly unscientific and almost unreasonable basis that they are from New York " and I like New York (disclaimer: I've never actually been to New York Go figure). A previous choice which team to back was based on the color of their uniforms Hey, I like yellow, OK?
So Who Is The Super Bowl Winner?
And is it super bowl or superbowl? According to US Americans, it's super bowl; the rest of us are either somewhat divided or we lean towards superbowl.
15 Minutes After The Game
About 15 minutes after the game had ended I asked Google "superbowl won".
Notice that there is no spelling correction. Google does know about the two different ways of writing this and highlights both superbowl and super bowl.
There's news on top but it's old news; there is no winner.
There is a best guess instant answer for the previous super bowl.
The authoritative NFL domain superbowl.com has the score and Google is able to parse it into its search results but this information doesn't seem to be fed back into the system to conclude that the game is over and/or who the winner is.
Half An Hour After The Game
30 minutes after the game 3 out of 4 searches give a winner in the news items.
superbowl winner is the only search to not feature news on top. It does show the best guess and does so prominently as the first result. About both I wonder; Why?
superbowl won still shows best guess but super bowl won does not show best guess. Why?
Over An Hour Later
More than an hour later all searches show who won the super bowl.
Notice how supebowl won and superbowl winner will get a "Showing Results For" notification on top; only who won the superbowl doesn't get a "Showing Results For" notice.
The Best Guess is gone for superbowl won. It's still there on superbowl winner but in that search news has moved up from #3 to #1, overtaking the best guess spot. None of the searches features a best guess for this year's super bowl
This Morning
It takes until this morning before the best guess is gone on who won the superbowl as well.
It still includes search results for both superbowl and super bowl but no notice on top yet that that is the case.
Some Observations
- although Google has historic spelling data for some reason the notice "Showing Results For" starts to appear on searches only later; it is as if we're starting from scratch here
- the best guess instant answer for last year's super bowl was stubbornly persistent. That's especially surprising in light of Google's freshness changes which specifically list regularly recurring events. I had expected that this specific instant answer would have a date reset; if today = superbowl then don't show old best guess.
- and talking about that best guess; the search superbowl won has it while the more (US) correct super bowl won hasn't.
- superbowl winner had news on 3rd, best guess on top. While the other searches showed the latest news including who the winner was, this search showed old news. Old facts with old news. Again, weird in the eyes of the freshness update.
- logged in or not, anonymous or not, these were all straight forward results; not a social result in site.
About the Author: Ruud Hein
