Let’s start with Microsoft’s offerings.  Earlier this week, a post on the official Live Search blog discussed playoff searches.  Type in "NHL," "NBA," or a player’s name, and you’ll get what people in Redmond call an Instant Answer that includes stuff like scores and schedules.

 

Try the same thing with "mtv awards" before May 31st, and you’ll see links to promo videos and a voting site.  Or do it afterwards, and a list of the different winners should be presented.

A look at Yahoo then returns us to the world of sports.  On the Yahoo Search Blog, Yuko Kamae wrote, "Starting today, when you search for your favorite major league or college sports team on Yahoo! Search, a new shortcut appears with the real time score, the last game’s score, and the date and time of the next game.  You’ll also find quick links to the team’s page, as well as news, scores, schedules, stats, and photos."

Finally, Google stepped up with fresh OneBoxes tied to tennis and Roland Garros.

A few sports and entertainment sites may resent these features, but it seems that the three search companies have done a great job of making timely information more accessible.

A post at the Live Search blog discusses some useful features added to Live Search in time for the holidays that are very universal-searchy. The Instant Answers features are aimed to improve the searching experience for shopping and travel. The only problem is, when I try to use the features, I’m not so lucky as to be blessed with them. Well, 2 out of 3 anyway. One of them works.

The first feature they discuss is for shopping. Theoretically, you search for a product and it brings up "instant answers" with ratings and prices. A useful enough feature for comparison shoppers. They provide the screenshot below.

However, when I test this myself, even using the exact same search for "Canon PowerShot," I am not presented with these instant answers, but a run-of-the-mill search results page.

Feature number two is also in the shopping category, and shows an image and a summary of reviews and specs when you search for the exact product model name. They provide the example of the "Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital ELPH," a search that I duplicated in my own testing.

This one actually worked just as described as you can see the box within the search results page:

I tried the third one, which is supposed to tell you if airfare is going up or down for "flights from (point a) to (point b), just as in the provided example of "Flights from Boston to Atlanta". I duplicated that search and got the same result as Microsoft’s example.

However, when I tried a different one from my hometown of Lexington to New York City, I got nothing. When I tried Lexington to Atlanta I got nothing. I tried Lexington to Chicgago. Nothing.

We have an airport. Apparently it’s not recognized by Microsoft. Perhaps the features haven’t been entirely rolled out yet. Regardless, I don’t know that they are going to be drawing much traffic away from Google or Yahoo.