Search Function Analysis: ESPN.com
ESPN.com is the sports broadcasting giant's website that exists mainly to report the latest scores and breaking news. Their search function is displayed by the industry standard magnifying glass, and expands into a full search bar on click. The text within the search bar lets the user know that he can search in three main categories: sports, teams or players.
ESPN search initial view.
ESPN search active view.
I wanted to test out the search's functionality when it comes to misspelled search queries, and I was met with the built-in autosuggest feature as soon as I started typing the query "New York Nicks." I typed "Nicks" instead, hoping to outsmart (or "outdumb" in this case?) the search function--it instead pulled up results for athletes with the last name "Nicks." However, it did offer up a "search all results" link that could be helpful had I been that rare user wanting the latest New York Knicks news, but didn't know how to spell the team's name.
The "No results" page wasn't all that helpful. I know it's hard to suggest related content when one types gibberish into a search bar, but ESPN could provide a bulleted list of suggested high-level topics such as "Latest sports scores," "News articles," "Team news by sport," etc. Dead ends should always be a no-no.
I typed in "Arsenal" hoping to get search results related to Arsenal FC, a professional London-based soccer team. Click on the "Arsenal" category on the built-in autosuggest dropdown within the search leads to Arsenal's team page on the ESPNFC.com soccer news site.
Hitting "enter" or clicking on the search button leads to a results page mainly made up of the latest news articles relating to the team. The top half of the results page seemed to make sense--ESPN must employ some type of search results algorithm that generates a list of articles based on reverse chronological order and popularity. However, the bottom half of the first page of results brought me to a Tottenham Hotspur team page link..which is a huge no-no as Tottenham is Arsenal's hated North London rival. So ESPN's search result algorithm either needs some heavy tweaking, or some Tottenham Hotspur fan paid ESPN's IT staff good money to troll every Arsenal fan looking for team news on ESPN.com.
