Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s engaging in sporting events is not new and as a search engine is always plays its part in almost everything. However, this time during the Soccer World Cup 2014, the company has turned more than a search engine its running a strong world cup campaign competing with Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR).
Josh Lipton of CNBC reported how Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is working day and night to cover the world cup and all the different aspects of it. These employees watch the games not for entertainment, but for work and all this happens from a ‘War Room’ in San Francisco. Fans all over the globe search for information about their favorite teams, players and other statistics during the World Cup. According to Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), there have been over 1.5 billion searches so far.
Roya Soleimani, Communications manager at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), spoke to CNBC and she mentioned how world cup grew big on the internet as compared to other key international and domestic events. The other big sporting events are generally in the range of 100s of billions and this figure of 1.5 billion searches surely tells how popular this world cup has been.
“In 2010, the world cup had more interest than the Olympics, The Tour De France and the super bowl combined. So I think that we’ve shattered that even more this year, with 1.5 billion searches so far,” Soleimani said
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) employees meet in the war room daily to mine the searches and create info graphics by identifying the most popular topics in the searches. These are then shared on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s website as well as social media and broadcasters such as ESPN.
Financial analysts believe that the search giant is taking on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) with this project. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) breaks down millions of tweets to create trends which can be used by the advertisers. With this project, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) wants to show the advertisers that it is as capable as Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) for providing real time analytics and trends.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has run similar campaigns before, however they have not done something like this on a global scale before. So it’s all about generating more advertising dollars for the company at the end of the day. So if the search giant can find ways like this to package the data in a better way, it would attract more advertisers.
“Now we wait and see whether advertisers are impressed by these real time snapshots of what fans are thinking as players take the field to battle for that world cup trophy.” Lipton said
Disclosure: None
