Googling ‘March Madness’ still defaults to men’s games

Photo by M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

There are exciting games in the Sweet Sixteen and one that is going to be very nerve-racking for me.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the games started yesterday. The schedule box for the men's tournament was pulled up by searching "sweet sixteen march madness." The women's games are placed at the bottom of a ribbon.

This is the first year that the women's college basketball tournament is able to use the high-profile March Madness branding. The change came after an uproar over the inequitable conditions at last year's women's games and another few months spent highlighting the many ways the NCAA has failed its female athletes. It should be a year to correct some of the wrongs of the past iteration of the tournament and to put the women's game on the equal footing it has deserved for a long time.

Things aren't caught up on the internet. The first thing that came up when I searched for March Madness was a box with the men's tournament schedule. There is a sidebar on the right. There is a ribbon for the women's games, but no real links to more information.

When people come to Search, it takes things like trends and game times into account.

It's a frustrating experience for a sports reporter who writes a newsletter for Just Women's Sports and also sees men's scores pop up in her search results. Important details or links for women's games are not included in the men's tournament box. She has to add the information box for the women's tournament for any March Madness searches.

I never want to type "women" at the end of a search.

The same thing happens when I search for other sports, like the US Soccer team, which has a women and a men's team. The men's schedule is up first. I was told by Watkins that her searches were correct, but that she gave her results for the men's team.

Adriance said that it can be hard to disentangle sports information for reasons other than gender, like when multiple sports teams have the same name, and that sometimes the women's iteration of a sport comes up first. If there is more coverage of a men's sport on the internet, then search will show more results.

It's frustrating to see a company argue that they might not show women's sports because there isn't as much information about them. Women's sports are still trying to shake off decades of being undermined by organizations like the NCAA and under invested in by networks and media. It is a choice to follow behind the baseline de-prioritization rather than taking active steps to counteract it. TV networks and tech companies have choices about what to promote. People watch when those groups properly invest in and promote the women's game, treating it as a product in its own right rather than a second-class subject.

It's easy to find what you're looking for with the score box and the option to switch between the men and women. Adriance didn't say if that was a consideration.

I think it would be fun to have March Madness pull up women's sports only and force people to type in their brackets. I will settle for not having to type in the game I am interested in.