Purple Widget – An SEO Experiment

What time does the Super Bowl start?

What time is the SuperBowl?

What time does Super Bowl XLV start?

Super Bowl Kickoff Time

When does the Super Bowl start?

What times does the Super Bowl start in 2011?

Why is this a question being asked on an SEO blog – simple, it’s asked many ways and MANY TIMES on search engines in the days leading up to the big game.

For the past few years, and I’d expect another one this year, Search Engine Land has had an article identifying the huge spike in this term each year. More importantly the fact that nobody was capitalizing on the potential to attract a lot of traffic. That was before Google caught on last year and started showing the answer above the search results. It remains to be seen if Google repeats this practice in 2011.

Now I don’t know about you but for as long as I can remember the game has started at the same time. Certainly it hasn’t always started at 6:20pm ET but in recent memory, it has. But I’m a football fan. A lot of non-football fans watch the Super Bowl so the question is asked a lot – what time does the Super Bowl actually start?

The answer itself is also inconsistent – thanks to TV. The TV stations want you to believe the game starts at 6:00pm ET so you’ll tune in then, when in reality kickoff is 20 minutes later. Never mind the hours of pre-game show leading up to the official broadcast time of the game itself. So when you do a search for Super Bowl start time you’ll find conflicting answers – when the TV people win, it’s 6pm ET, when it truly answers the question about kick off you’ll commonly see the correct answer of 6:20pm ET. Now – that’s not set in stone, sometimes all the pomp and circumstance takes more than 20 minutes and the actual kickoff may not happen until 6:27pm ET.

So it’s a question that is asked a lot and answered multiple ways.

My answer to what time does the Super Bowl start in 2011?

Main TV coverage at 6pm ET, 5pm CT, 4pm MT, 3pm PT

Kickoff approximately (should be no later than 10 minutes after, it used to be quoted at 6:27pm ET) 6:20pm ET, 5:20pm CT, 4:20pm MT, 3:20pm PT

So there you go, a complicated answer to a simple question about Super Bowl start time.

And just a few other details that most people already know:

Super Bowl XLV (that’s 45) is played in Dallas, TX at the new Cowboys Stadium and it’s the Green Bay Packers vs the Pittsburgh Steelers

Enjoy the game – and enjoy the commercials (which for my 2 cents just haven’t been very good in recent years, but that’s another blog post all together).

Last but not least, this is an SEO blog after all, will this post ever show up as a search result for the question? I doubt it – it won’t likely have any links – only a tweet or two, and maybe a Facebook post. But, we’ll see.