espnheader1 ESPN, a leading Sports Channel Rolls out New Sports Search Platform ESPN, the leading Sports News Franchise, is planning to test its ESPN Sports Search Engine on Thursday. The newly  Search Engine is an intuitive step in accomplishing the target of redesigning the whole site with bunch of extra new features. The Search Engine has taken almost 1 year to complete and will be a boon to all exhilarated sports fan. It will be a great addition in an upcoming revamped UI as the smooth searching plays a vital role in making site more flexible and user friendly.

Users having an ESPN Insider account that allows them to access a special online content and a magazine subscription, will have an opportunity to test the new Search features on Thursday.  While ESPN is testing it on hundreds of selected “insiders”, they are planning to do huge beta testing in an upcoming month.

According to PaidContent, Site’s Technical Producer, Chris Jason has explained that they have focused five different kinds of readers such as :

    • Those who know what they want, but can’t find it.
    • People who know what they want, but don’t know where to look.
    • Fanatics, who want everything from ESPN.com’s archives, which go back to 1999.
    • The time-killer, someone, probably on a lunch break, just looking for something to do
    • Someone into non-major sports or off-beat topics. For example, the National Spelling Bee competition, surprisingly or not, actually drives a lot of traffic on ESPN from non-regular readers. And while Jason claimed “searches go through the roof, we don’t have a particular home on the site for it.” That makes it especially hard to find. So when someone does a search for “spelling bee” on the new system, they also get shown pockets to view other sports stories and features that may be off the beaten path.

The Search function is aimed to visualize typical e-commerce looks with a Search box displaying different search areas. It is expected that the new features will help in multiplying the search page views while the company is also planning to add text ads.

The Search feature is one of the most wanted features, the site has implemented so far. It will really help users to excess a pertinent search results and values.

espnpage thumb ESPN, a leading Sports Channel Rolls out New Sports Search Platform