As the nation awaits Super Bowl 46, people are heading to Yahoo! to get the inside scoop on one of the most popular sporting events of the year!  Yahoo! searches this week for “Indianapolis Super Bowl 2012” are up 1,743%.

Who Will Win? If online searches were an indicator of who might win this year’s Super Bowl, the Patriots would come out on top – the New England Patriots had 50% more searches this year on Yahoo! compared to the New York Giants.

Brady vs. Manning: Whether it’s his endorsement with UGG or his relationship with Gisele Bundchen, Tom Brady has dominated searches this year compared to his NY Giants counterpart, Eli Manning. Yahoo! searches this NFL season for “Tom Brady” have been two times higher than searches for “Eli Manning.” Additional Brady vs. Manning searches on Yahoo!:

• In the regular season, Tom Brady got four times the number of searches on Yahoo! compared to Eli Manning.
• Since the post-season play has begun, Eli Manning has received slightly more searches on Yahoo! than Tom Brady.
• Yahoo! searches for “Tom Brady and Gisele photos” are up 397% and searches for “Tom Brady baby” are up 1,109%.

Ladies Love Manning: This month on Yahoo!, women are certainly buzzing more for Eli compared to Tom. Yahoo! searches by women for “Eli Manning” this month are up 268%.  And, speaking of love, the players’ love lives are certainly a topic of interest this month on Yahoo!: Searches this month on Yahoo! for “Eli Manning girlfriend” are up 1,201% and searches for “Eli Manning wedding” are up 308%.

Player & Coach Showdown:

This year on Yahoo!, Bill Belichick got over five times more searches compared to Tom Coughlin.

• Yahoo! searches this month for “Bill Belichick” are up 730% and searches for “Tom Coughlin” are up 550%.

Offense vs. Defense: Does defense really win the game or is it more of a team effort?  When it comes to Yahoo! searches for players, offense gets just as much search play as defense.This year, Rob Gronkowski received over four times the searches on Yahoo! compared to Hakeem Nicks.

According to Yahoo!, the top searched receivers this week are:

1. Wes Welker
2. Rob Gronkowski
3. Victor Cruz
4. Aaron Hernandez
5. Hakeem Nicks

Kids Rush to Search: Of the searches for “Ahmad Bradshaw” this week on Yahoo!, 27% are coming from kids aged 13-17; however compared to “Brandon Jacobs,” this is a small percentage. Of the searches for “Brandon Jacobs” this week on Yahoo!, 52% are coming from kids ages 13-17.

Super Bowl Questions: From game time to point spreads, each year, people turn to Yahoo! for all of their Super Bowl related questions.  Some of this year’s most searched questions on Yahoo! include:

Q: When is the Super Bowl 2012? A: Sunday, February 5, 2012
Q: What time is the Super Bowl? A: 6:30 p.m. EST (kickoff)
Q: Who is playing in the Super Bowl 2012? A: New England Patriots vs. New York Giants
Q: Who will win Super Bowl 2012? A: We’ll just have to wait and see!
Q: Where is Super Bowl 2012? A: Lucas Oil Stadium; Indianapolis, IN
Q: Who is singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl? A: Kelly Clarkson

The Fun Behind the Bowl: From parties and friendly wagers to commercial hype and half-time performances, for many Americans, the Super Bowl is about more than a football game – it’s about having fun!

Half-time Performers: Although Madonna will rule the half-time stage at the Super Bowl, searches for Nicki Minaj, who is also reported to be performing, this week on Yahoo! are slightly greater than those for Madonna. This year on Yahoo!, Nicki Minaj received 45% more searches than Madonna.

Dipping Into the Fun: Super Bowl parties typically start early in the day and continue well after the final whistle, and oftentimes involve snacking throughout the day.  The snack favorite for many people? Dips!

According to Yahoo!, the top searched “dips” this month are:

1. Buffalo chicken dip
2. Spinach dip
3. 7 Layer Mexican dip
4. Spinach artichoke dip
5. Crab dip
6. Taco dip
7. Guacamole dip
8. Chicken wing dip
9. Cheese dip
10. Shrimp dip

Cooking Up a Win: In addition to dips, many people turn to Yahoo! to find a new recipe for the Super Bowl – searches this week for “Super Bowl recipes” are up 210%, with 70% of the searches coming from women. The top states searching for “Super Bowl recipes” this week on Yahoo! include: Missouri, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

According to Yahoo!, the top searched “recipes” this week are:

1. Chicken recipes
2. Crockpot recipes
3. Meatloaf recipes
4. Chili recipes
5. Banana bread recipes
6. Soup recipes
7. Super Bowl recipes
8. Beef stew recipes
9. Vegetarian recipes
10. Meatball recipe

Quick Tip: On Yahoo! Recipe Search (recipes.search.yahoo.com), once you land on the search results page you can filter by “occasion” on the left side of the page and “Super Bowl” is a filter option. For example, the “Chicken recipe” search results filtered by Superbowl can be found here!

Commercial Laughs: Whether you’re a football fan or not, it’s likely that on Sunday you’ll at least spend some time scoping out the commercials. Searches this week on Yahoo! for “2012 Super Bowl commercials” are up 732%. From Bueller to Beckham, this is the one time when most Americans will be glued to their seats during the commercials.

Watch Super Bowl Commercials on Yahoo! Screen

• With all of the excitement around the Honda commercial that riffs off of Matthew Broderick’s famed role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, searches for the movie this week on Yahoo! are up 1,274%. Also of interest this week on Yahoo!: “Ferris Bueller commercial,” “Ferris Bueller quotes,” and “Ferris Bueller soundtrack.”
• Additional Super Bowl commercials piquing interest in search this week include: “funny Super Bowl commercials,” “cost of Super Bowl commercials,” “top 10 Super Bowl commercials,” “Super Bowl commercial transcripts,” and “new Super Bowl commercials.”

Friendly Wager Anyone?: Yahoo! searches this week for “Super Bowl point spread” are up 591% and “2012 Super Bowl odds” are up 432%.  Also, searches for “Super Bowl 2012 predictions” are up 836%. Of the searches for “Super Bowl bets” this month on Yahoo!, 78% are coming from men.

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Quick Tip: Love Yahoo! Search Trends? Explore them for yourself on Yahoo! Clues.

What is Yahoo! Search Data?

Yahoo! aggregates the billions of searches performed every day across Yahoo! properties to give the pulse on what people are thinking and talking about. We sift through billions of Yahoo! searches to uncover trends, burning questions, popular personalities and hot ideas. Yahoo! has been extremely successful in sifting through searches for trend-spotting, historical insight, forecasting projections, and big-picture analysis. Billions of searches are conducted on Yahoo! each month.

Yahoo! Search Data on Twitter: @yahoosearchdata

Yahoo! Search on Twitter: @yahoosearch

The Restaurant Comparison Quick App consolidates key comparison points like price, distance, cuisine type, atmosphere, and ratings in a single side-by-side view. When you search for a restaurant, the App also displays similar restaurants nearby. This way, you can find the restaurant you want in a single, easy-to-use app.

Other perks of using the Restaurant Comparison Quick App:

• Includes contact information, hours of operation, and direct links to book a reservation through the Open Table Quick App
• Saves you the time and effort of finding nearby restaurants
• Allows for quicker discovery, comparison, and decision making

Here’s the Restaurant Comparison Quick App for Farallon in San Francisco:

Give the Restaurant Comparison Quick App a try and let us know what you think.

Guy Hepworth
Senior Product Manager, Quick Apps

Search for “gps” and the Shopping Shortcut will show you the top GPS products, along with price, rating, and number of reviews.

For specific products, you can also see items related to the one you searched for. Search for “Nikon d3000” and the Shopping Shortcut shows you related products viewed by other shoppers who searched for the same item.

At Yahoo! we are always aiming to make your shopping experience easier and more fun. These features are only the beginning – please stay tuned for more exciting features in the very near future.

Happy Shopping!

Natasha Fattedad
Principal Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Sketch-a-Search Quick App

Finding a new restaurant in your neighborhood has never been so easy. With our Sketch-a-search Quick App for your desktop, we’re bringing a first-of-its kind app people love on their iPhones now to more connected devices. This innovative app allows you to refine your restaurant hunt by drawing the area you want to search directly on a map and zeroing in on a particular street or neighborhood. Simply search for a food category and location, for example, restaurants 94109, look for the Sketch-a-Search link, and then sketch your way to restaurants in the area.  You can filter restaurants by cuisine, ambiance, and ratings, and even see reviews of thousands of Zagat-rated restaurants alongside reviews from Yahoo!’s huge community.

OpenTable Quick App

Booking a dinner reservation is now one search away. Starting today, Yahoo! has partnered with OpenTable, a leading provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations, to allow you to book reservations without ever leaving the Yahoo! Search results page. Just search for a restaurant, click the “Make Reservation” button, review the overview with pricing, location and parking information, and click “find a table.”  Try it out with a search like Evvia Palo Alto.

SNEAK PEEK: Restaurant Comparison Quick App

If you’re one of our lucky few testers, you can even try out a new Restaurant Comparison app we’ll be rolling out for everyone in the coming months. For foodies who can’t decide where to dine, this new app will help you choose the best restaurant for any occasion by organizing the often-cluttered local content on the Web into a single snapshot view of similar restaurants in the area – with a side-by-side look at their cuisine type, distance, atmosphere, price, and ratings.

Stay tuned for more on other new Quick Apps coming to Yahoo! Search soon. Bon Appetite!

Guy Hepworth
Senior Product Manager, Quick Apps

Today, Yahoo! Search is testing a beta version of a more intelligent and content-rich Search Assist (a technology that Yahoo! pioneered) with a fraction of searchers. If you’re not in our test group, check out these screenshots to see the current versions we’re trying out:

The new rich Yahoo! Search Assist beta displays answers or direct links to them instantly as you type, and really pays attention to you as a user. It will give you an instant answer for many of your searches, or a helpful set of the top-clicked results for your topic, all within the Search Assist window. This new search innovation will change the way you consume information, making it an easy, enjoyable, and fast experience.

And this is only the first step in redefining how you use search. With this initial test, we are surfacing rich answers for sports players & teams, news, TV shows, and trending searches. We’re excited about this beta release and are looking forward to expanding coverage and making it available to more of you in the months to come.

Ethan Batraski
Group Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Typing search queries in Chinese can be challenging especially for new computer users because it requires memorizing Chinese character mapping rules. Even experienced computer users don’t remember the mapping for all Chinese characters. The handwriting feature lowers the hurdle for people searching on Yahoo! Taiwan and Yahoo! Hong Kong.

To use the handwriting feature, first open the writing panel next to the search button (make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player).  When you finish drawing a Chinese character, you’ll see up to six candidate characters that best match the character you drew. After you select the character you want, you may see search suggestions, saving you even more keystrokes on long queries.

For example, to search for “Lady Gaga,” you can start writing the first Chinese character of the singer’s name in the writing panel and receive six candidates that match the character.

After the first candidate is picked, you’ll see 10 search suggestions.  Lady Gaga is the fourth suggestion in the list.

The handwrite technology supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, and numbers.

With this new feature, we’re continuing our focus on answering the needs of our international markets. If you use Yahoo! Search in Taiwan or Hong Kong, give the handwriting feature a try.

James Ying
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Sitting here in our Yahoo! headquarters at Sunnyvale, if I type “santa” from Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California,  I get “santa clara county” as the first suggestion.

If I type the same query from my friend’s place in Santa Barbara, I get “santa barbara” as the first suggestion.

 Here’s another example that commuters in the New York and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas will appreciate: As I type “port au” from the New York area, I get “port authority bus terminal” and suggestions prioritized for New York’s Port Authority.

 But if I’m in the Pittsburgh area, I’ll see more locally relevant suggestions like “pittsburgh port authority” and “port authority of allegheny county.”

Yahoo! Search Assist helps you find what you need with fewer keystrokes by taking into account the location from which you’re searching.

Give this new feature a try and let us know what you think about geo-sensitive search suggestions in the comments section below.

Vivian Lin Dufour                                                                
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Whether you’re a dedicated fan or just want to check out Maria Sharapova’s outfit, simply search for ‘US Open’ or your favorite player. You will find real-time scores and schedule of the day, news, photos and tweets. Did you know many tennis players love to tweet?

This is an exciting time for tennis fans: for the number one seed Rafael Nadal, who has never won the US open title, this can be finally his year. Or could the winner be Roger Federer, who won last week in Cincinati, his first title in seven months?

No matter who you’re rooting for, we hope you’ll use our Shortcut to follow coverage of the US Open.

Yuko Kamae
Yahoo! Search

You probably already use Yahoo! Search Assist to conduct your searches quickly, but now you can get even fresher suggestions, which will be especially useful when there are recent top news or events related to your search topic. With the new suggestion algorithm we’ve launched, you will see near real-time suggestions to help you easily find the freshest content.

For example, I was wondering which team the Netherlands would be matched with in the World Cup today, so I typed “Netherlands vs.”, and the first suggestion is for today’s game. Clicking on the first suggestion, I was able to see game information right in the search result page.

You can also find near real-time suggestions in Yahoo! News Search. Again, when you type “netherlands” in Yahoo! News Search, you will see today’s match — “netherland vs brazil” as the first suggestion. This functionality helps you find the most timely information quickly.

We hope the near real-time Search Assist feature helps you find the latest information about your query and enhances your search experience. Give it a try on Yahoo! Search and then give us your feedback or ask questions in the comments below.

Linda Wang
Senior Product Manager
Yahoo! Search