Finding pertinent information about women’s sports is now simpler thanks to Google Search.
Google announced Tuesday that it is rolling out several new ways to make it easier for users to find relevant information when searching for women’s sports.
The new updates come in time for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The search giant says it has expanded coverage of women’s competitions in the info boxes you see at the top of the results page to more than 380 leagues.
Additionally, Google has added over 110 leagues in women’s football, cricket and rugby over the past year.
It has also partnered with broadcasters and rights holders to provide easy access to live streams and highlights directly from the search results page.
Our automated systems can usually tell what you’re looking for based on the wording and context of your query.
But there are other situations where our systems are unable to determine which team men’s or women’s – or which specific person you are looking for with these more ambiguous queries.
We have and are still rolling out updates to make the features we provide for gender-ambiguous queries more inclusive, such as making it easier to switch back and forth between male and female results in sports tournaments.
Google says its systems take into account growing searches around tournaments and other factors to better understand what users are really searching for.
This will allow Google to display features related to women’s leagues and popular events.
In addition, Google has improved gender-specific language searches such as Spanish, German and Hindi. For example, queries like “jugadoras de béisbol” (feminine of “baseball players” in Spanish) now provide more gender-correct answers.
Google notes that while its systems are getting better at showing information about women’s sports, it acknowledges that there is an imbalance on the site in terms of how men’s and women’s sports are covered.
For example, if there is a predominance of content about men’s sports, this may mean that searches are more likely to turn up such information.
To address this, Google is working with content creators and news publishers to increase the amount of relevant, high-quality media coverage of women’s sports.
At this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, users will be able to watch official highlights, follow their favorite teams, receive alerts during games and browse statistics such as match records, recent form and odds of winning.
The upgrades come in time for the Women’s World Cup, which kicked off on Thursday.
The U.S. women’s national team is seeking its fifth straight title and faces the Netherlands on Wednesday.
Google has expanded coverage of women’s sports in the info boxes at the top of its results page to more than 380 leagues, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.
In the last year alone, Google has added 110 leagues in women’s football, rugby and cricket.
The search results page will now also give users easy access to live streams and highlights from leagues including the WNBA and Women’s Premier League.
Google is also improving its understanding of search queries to display women’s leagues when a user searches for ambiguous terms such as “Germany national football team,” without specifying male or female.
“We have and are rolling out updates to make the features we provide for gender-ambiguous queries more inclusive, such as making it easier to switch back and forth between men’s and women’s results in sports tournaments,” Google said in a blog post.
Improvements have also been made for people searching in gendered languages such as Spanish, German and Hindi.
For example, asking for “jugadoras de béisbol,” the feminine gender of baseball players in Spanish, will now return more gender-correct answers, the company said.
Google search will also take into account the growing search for current and trending tournaments and events.
Sources: Techcrunch | Newsnation