« New TVs for Super Bowl Sunday | Microsoft & Yahoo Network Strengths »

Super Bowl Quarterback Fascination

January 31, 2008

Everyone is getting geared up for Sunday’s Super Bowl and there is growing interest in each of the quarterbacks. Searches for ‘tom brady’ and ‘eli manning’ both jumped last week as curious fans looked for information on each of the players. The weekly search term share of traffic increased 336% for ‘tom brady’ and 209% for ‘eli manning’ for the week ending Jan. 26th compared to the previous week.

Searches.png

Many of the searches for each player result in a visit to Wikipedia, suggesting that people are just interested in some basic background information. For ‘tom brady’ searches, the official site of the New England Patriots, patriots.com is the second beneficiary of the search traffic. The website for Eli’s team, the New York Giants, ranked tenth for websites that received traffic from ‘eli manning’, for the same time period.

tom urls.png

eli urls.png

The search behavior also exhibits particular interest in the personal lives of Tom and Eli, especially around information about who they are dating. Tom Brady’s high profile romances with current girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen and ex-girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan are drivers of many searches on Tom’s name. Last week, search volume around his girlfriend and baby ranked higher than inquiries about his possible ankle injury. Eli Manning’s girlfriend may not be as well known, but searchers are also looking for information about his romantic interest (he is dating Abby McGrew) as well. Eli’s brother Peyton, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, also appears in searches for Eli’s name to see if they are related.

search terms.png

I guess the fascination with who is dating the quarterback extends long after high school. Tom & Eli should make sure to show their good sides on Sunday, there are lots of searches for their photos!


Posted by Heather Dougherty at 09:51 AM | (0) | (0)

TrackBack

TrackBack URL:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/715.

Post a comment

If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry.

 
 

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.