Google is making strides in providing better access to information on women’s sports through its Search platform. As part of its efforts to boost coverage of women’s competitions, Google has expanded the information boxes displayed at the top of search results to include over 380 leagues related to women’s sports. In the past year, the company has added more than 110 leagues covering women’s soccer, cricket, and rugby, with the intention of offering comprehensive coverage of women’s sporting events.
The timely introduction of these updates coincides with the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, allowing users to stay up-to-date and informed about the tournament and other women’s sports events.
To ensure that users can access live streams and highlights directly from the Search results page, Google has collaborated with broadcasters and rights holders. This move aims to provide convenient access to real-time information and media content for fans of women’s sports.
Google is also working on improving its systems to better understand ambiguous queries, especially those related to gender. By fine-tuning its automated systems, Google aims to offer inclusive and accurate results for both men’s and women’s sports, allowing users to seamlessly switch between the two categories while searching for sports tournaments and related content.
Additionally, Google is addressing language-specific challenges by enhancing search results for gendered languages like Spanish, German, and Hindi. For example, Spanish queries like “jugadoras de béisbol” (the feminine form of “baseball players”) will now yield more gender-correct responses.
While Google acknowledges that there may be imbalances in online media coverage between men’s and women’s sports, the company is actively collaborating with content creators and news publishers to increase the quantity and quality of media coverage for women’s sports. By doing so, Google aims to create a more equitable representation of sports across the web.
For the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Google Search offers users a comprehensive experience with official highlights, team updates, notifications during games, and detailed statistics like head-to-head records, recent form, and win probability.
