Super Bowl

If you’ve tuned into any kind of news in the past few weeks, you know Super Bowl 44 is coming this Sunday, when the Indianapolis Colts play the New Orleans Saints. As excitement builds before kickoff, we’ve seen search spikes by people looking for information on key Colts Peyton Manningand Dwight Freeney, Super Bowl predictions and picks, commercials, and more. For example, people search more for logos of the opposing team!
Here’s a look at some of the search trends around Sunday’s upcoming showdown in at Dolphin Stadium in South Florida:
Kickoff Time – No need to click further – the game starts at 6:25 p.m. EST.
Betting and Predictions –NFL.com’s user poll has the Saints favored to win, and searchers are surely curious about the team. Users are searching for the Saints 53 percent more often than the Colts on the Wednesday before the big game. But if MVP is awarded by search popularity, make that call in favor of Peyton Manning. And for all the single ladies searching for “Peyton Manning married,” we regret to report that he has been married to his wife Ashley since 2001.
Commercials – Searchers are looking for the Doritos and Budweiser commercials, both of which are going to be picked by fans in advance of the event.
Half-Time Show – We’re hoping the set malfunctions clear up in time for the big show, which features British rockers The Who this year.
Past Super Bowls – Bowl trivia is big, especially at parties, so Yahoo! users are digging around for stats on previous big games. Queries are for games from specific years and for “Super Bowl trivia.”
Wallpaper and logos – The Saints are ahead with queries for wallpapers, but more users overall are looking for Colts logos. Interestingly, people are interested in the logos of the opposing team. In Louisiana, searches for the Colts’ logo had a one day jump of 150 whereas Indiana jumped 67 percent on “Saints logo” searches.
Songs – Almost 92 percent of song searches were for the Who Dat song. Catchy lyric? Or, predictor of success? All we can say is that it’s a silent minority looking for the “Colts fight song” online.
Food – Queries on “Super Bowl party food ideas” and recipes are way up as people pick which wings to try out on their pals at parties across the nation. “Super Bowl appetizers” is also a popular query. Here in Yahoo! Search, we prefer guacamole.
Home field advantage – Our sports specialist dug around for some information on what users were looking for in Indiana and Louisiana. He found that “Super Bowl tickets” searches in Louisiana had a buzz score 50 points higher than the same search in Indiana, so the Who Dat Nation may have the home field advantage. If history is an indicator, they can break out the beads on Bourbon Street now. The Pittsburgh Steelers carried the buzz score advantage over the Arizona Cardinals in 2009 by 15 buzz points, and they carried the game. Can anyone translate that into a points spread?