What Time Is The Super Bowl? Google & Bing Are Confused

As Super Bowl 50 approaches, people will begin searching more and more for the starting time (kickoff is 3:30 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016). But right now, both Google and Bing live in the past, depending on how you ask.

“What Time Is The Super Bowl?” Madness

So many people search for the start time of the Super Bowl each year that news publications have vied against each other for ages to rank tops for the query.

In 2014, Google tried to make it easier for searchers by introducing a direct answer box. Do a search for “when is the super bowl” on Google now, and you can see one of these appearing with the correct day and time for Super Bowl 50:

Last month, the box was getting the day wrong. That’s been fixed. But Google’s woes are back if you search for the Super Bowl 2016 start time in a different and popular way.

Google’s Living Like It’s 2015

On Google, a search right now for “what time is the super bowl” brings up a direct answer at the top of the page, one drawn from a Huffington Post article:

The information showing is for last year, including listing the teams for last year (This year’s teams obviously aren’t known).

If you change that search slightly to another popular search, “what time does the super bowl start,” then the correct answer appears:

Bing’s Wins & Losses

Bing gets it right for two of the searches, “when is the super bowl” and “what time is the super bowl,” as shown below:

However, if you ask Bing “what time does the Super Bowl start,” then like with one of Google’s answers, it acts like it’s 2015 and provides old information:

By the way, when the Super Bowl does actually start, our sister site, Marketing Land, will be ready with our annual Hashtag Bowl coverage of all the ads. For more about that, see our post today: Game On: The 2016 Marketing Land #HashtagBowl Is Coming Soon.