Google search: Delivering what you want

When you enter something into a search engine, you’ve got a question and you want an answer. It’s a simple premise. Google consistently tries to improve that service – to point you in the right direction, or where possible give you the information you are looking for directly in the search results. No extra click required. Task complete!

Football World Cup 2010

Google has, not surprisingly, pushed out a whole load of helpful onebox results (also referred to as integrated results) for the duration of the World Cup. Searching for world cup gives you live scores and upcoming fixtures.

England group table

Searching for a particular team, such as “England group table”, gives you England’s group table and their upcoming fixtures.

It’s genius in it’s simplicity. If you search for england group table at the moment, you’re only after one thing. Google knows that, so it shows it. There’s no marketing hullabullo. There’s no attempt to distract you from your task in hand. No hidden agenda. You had a task to solve and Google solved it.

The answer served on a plate

I’ve discovered three World Cup onebox variations so far, giving specific answers directly on the search result page. I’m expecting that Google are keeping their eyes on the search trends and we’re likely to see more variations before the tournament is over. (Top scorers perhaps? Red and yellow cards?)

If only more websites tried as hard as Google to help visitors with the tasks they want to complete. Google’s functional simplicity is second to none.