As we head into the college basketball championships this weekend, we thought it would be interesting to delve into the Bing search index to see if we could gather insights on the tournament. We took a sample of more than 350,000 queries related to the 2013-2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament to see what you wanted to know. Here’s what we found:
Which cities have the most basketball obsessed fans?
The denizens of these towns checked the scores for their favorite team on average 3 times more often than the rest of the nation. Folks from Grand Rapids are particularly devoted. They searched for scores 17 times more often than the rest of the country.
1. Grand Rapids, MI
2. Cedar Rapids, IA
3. Raleigh, NC
4. Grand Junction, CO
5. W. Palm Beach, FL
6. Hartford, CT
7. Providence, RI
8. Lincoln, NE
9. Cleveland, OH
10. Washington, DC-MD
What was the most searched team of the tournament?
What was the second most searched team of the tournament?
Who is the most searched team in the Final Four?
Which games led you to check the scores most often on Bing?
1. Round 64: Duke 71 – Mercer 78
2. Round 32: Iowa State 85 - North Carolina 83
3. Round 16: Michigan State 61 – Virginia 59
4. Round 8: Kentucky 75 – Michigan 72
Duke vs. Mercer: What does an upset look like?
In the 24 hours before the game, people were 2.5 times as likely to search about Duke as they were for Mercer (and nearly 6 times more likely to search explicitly for “Duke Basketball” vs “Mercer Basketball.”) However, Mercer’s upset turned that around. In the 24 hours after the game started, people were twice as likely to be looking up Mercer.
- The Bing Team