Over the past few days I’ve been searching for a load of ‘Olympics’ related terms and noticed that Google have gone all out to provide us with easy to access, handy information on what seems to be any event that’s taking place. Here’s a quick roundup…

Generic Olympics Search

When searching for “London Olympics” the most obvious thing you’ll see is the medal table, which seems to be updated within 20 minutes or so of someone winning. Other places, like the BBC olympics site, has a similar kind of thing but Google’s version is really quick to get to and looks great on mobile too.

Another handy, and I think genius, addition is the ‘watch online’ button (in the UK). Clicking this gives you a dropdown with links to the BBC, EBU and Eurosport. I tried this through Google.com and that button seems to disappear – maybe NBC need some help from Tim Berners Lee (if they can work out who he is).

Event Scheduling

Still on a generic search, there’s an area below that shows event scheduling information. Skip forward or back between the days to see results and timings, or click on one of the event names to find out more details. Again, the key to this is simplicity – although the BBC site has more information, Google’s version is particularly handy when you’re on the go (and actually looks better on mobile than it does in the full version).

Country Details

As I said before, it’s easy to drill down for more information, and one of the coolest things about this is the country profile page. It shows how many medals have been won, what events they were in, along with a schedule of what’s to come. Give it a go by searching for ‘team gb’.

Sport Types

At a high level, searching for something like ‘track cycling’ gives you an overview of what it is, the dates that it takes place on, along with a medals table (with Team GB on top of course). Further down there are timings, results, what’s to come, and a handy ‘quick list’ of all the different events that take place under this type of sport. As always, clicking these will give you even more information…

Individual Events

This example shows a search for “London 2012 Men’s Omnium” (click the image to zoom in) and proves just how much information you can get. Current standings, a list of what’s been and what’s to come, along with the information from before about track cycling as a whole.

It’s not perfect…

I’m not quite sure why, as they’ve nailed everything else, but searching for the women’s team sprint lists 3rd and 4th… but no silver or gold! I think we’ll forgive them though.