The Seattle Seahawks and their dominating defense beat the New England Patriots to be crowned Super Bowl LX champions. As with every Super Bowl, there is as much or more attention paid to the halftime show, and this year was no exception. There was not one, but two halftime shows, with an alternative show featuring Kid Rock being hosted by Turning Point USA, to protest the NFL’s selection of Spanish-speaking global superstar Bad Bunny as the official Super Bowl halftime show artist. 

The championship game was not the most thrilling ever played, due to it being a defensive duel. But according to initial viewership data, many stuck around to watch Bad Bunny put on a festive and high-energy halftime show, so many that it may set a new record. 

We used the Trisolute News Dashboard Mobile News Box report to analyze the top keywords and publishers on Super Bowl Sunday. Let’s take a look at the results.

Keyword Analysis

Overall: All keywords from all sources, both sports-focused and entertainment-focused for Super Bowl Sunday (2.8.26) date span:

• 63 keywords total
• 4,116 total rankings
• Top 10 keywords by Mobile News Box rankings: new england patriots (450), super bowl lx (450), seattle seahawks (436), super bowl halftime show (274), super bowl 2026 (228), super bowl (222), tpusa’s all American halftime show (192), levi’s stadium (187), kid rock (148), bad bunny (140).

Sports-focused keyword insights:

• When it came to the most popular naming convention for the Super Bowl in Mobile News Box visibility, “super bowl lx” reigned supreme (450 rankings) vs the second-most popular keyword of “super bowl 2026” with 228 rankings. Last year, the results were reversed. This may be due to the Roman numerals being easier to remember this year.
• The losing team earned more Mobile News Box visibility rankings than the winning team: “new england patriots” was the top keyword overall with 450 rankings while “seattle seahawks” came in third place with 436 rankings. 
• The Super Bowl venue “levi’s stadium” was a top 10 keyword in Mobile News Box rankings. Only 3 of the top 10 publishers earned visibility rankings, with yahoo.com earning the most for an explainer on the stadium’s history. These types of explainers could easily be converted into visual elements, such as a gallery or video to extend their value.
• There were several keywords related to what time does the Super Bowl begin. Multiple top 10 publishers had success with time-related explainers. This may change by next year, if AIOs and AI Mode further erode this area, but for this year’s Super Bowl, time-based keywords and content still performed well.
• With the Seahawks holding the Patriots scoreless going into halftime, usatoday.com and cbssports.com earned Mobile News Box rankings by addressing the search query: “has there ever been a shutout in the super bowl.” 

Entertainment-focused keyword insights:

• A similar theme played out between halftime shows, where the keyword “kid rock” edged out “bad bunny” in news box rankings, 148 to 140, though the official halftime show featuring Bad Bunny was the champion when it came to viewership. The preliminary estimate of Bad Bunny’s halftime show viewers was 135.4 million, which would make it the most watched Super Bowl halftime show of all time, while TPUSA’s streaming alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock drew up to 6M viewers during the halftime period, according to The New York Times.
• There was interest in all entertainment portions of the Super Bowl, not just the halftime show. Everything from the “super bowl black national anthem,” “super bowl america the beautiful,” super bowl anthem,” and “super bowl green day” scored Mobile News Box visibility rankings. 
• The time of performances drove Mobile News Box rankings for news publishers. While “what time does green day perform at the super bowl” was the top Super Bowl related keyword query triggering an AI Overview, there were over 2,000 Mobile News Box rankings for time-related Super Bowl entertainment keywords. This may have been amplified this year due to the dueling halftime shows.

Conversational queries and longer queries grew YOY

I thought we’d see greater growth in conversational queries due to the influence of AI search and LLM search products but overall there was just a slight growth YOY.

2026 super bowl

• 9 conversational (question) queries
• 16 keywords 5 words or longer

2025 super bowl

• 6 conversational (question) queries
• 14 keywords 5 words or longer

Where we did see the longer queries surface is in our SERP AI Overviews report. 

Year over year performance:

Keyword rankings overall were down YOY, but when reviewing the core keywords (super bowl, super bowl halftime show, etc.) the decline was not as severe and in some cases, performance was better this year than in 2025. When reviewing by publisher performance, foxnews.com was the only publisher in the top 10 to improve on their YOY keyword ranking amount.

Top Publishers

Top 10 publishers:

foxnews.com: Led the top 10 publishers in Mobile News Box keyword rankings for top-performing core keywords “super bowl lx” and “super bowl halftime show.” Their top-performing article focused on the halftime show controversy. They were able to maintain good visibility throughout Super Bowl Sunday.

usatoday.com: Their top keywords were “new england patriots” and “seattle seahawks” and their top articles were mostly what time and how to watch explainers. Their Mobile News Box visibility peaked during the afternoon.

nytimes.com/athletic: The Athletic’s top three keywords were all super bowl name variations: “super bowl,” “super bowl lx,” and “super bowl 2026.” They had a visibility spike in the early morning and then another huge spike at 5 p.m. with their halftime show live updates article.

espn.com: Demonstrated strong visibility in the Mobile News Boxes both before and after the game, most likely due to their authority for game analysis. Team names “seattle seahawks” and “new england patriots” were their top keywords. An article for sports stats geeks, Key Super Bowl intel through the lens of NFL Next Gen Stats and a what to expect explainer were their top articles.

cbsnews.com: Top-performing keyword was “super bowl halftime show.” Performed well in early morning coverage with a more modest spike in visibility during the game with a live updates article.

nbcnews.com: Earned more Mobile News Box visibility rankings than the rest of the top 10 publishers  for their top-performing keyword, “super bowl 2026.” They had a visibility spike at noon mostly for their live article.

yahoo.com: Yahoo Sports had a few visibility spikes across Super Bowl Sunday. They had early morning success with a player profile Rhamondre Stevenson, former OU football star, New England Patriots running back. Team names “seattle seahawks” and “new england patriots” were their top keywords. 

desertsun.com: Local news site that earned bulk of their rankings for keyword “tpusa’s all American halftime show.”

cbssports.com: Earned most of their Mobile News Box visibility ahead of the game but performed well for their halftime show live updates and recap coverage. Their top article was Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show: Setlist, takeaways and best moments. Their top keyword was “super bowl 2026.”

pnj.com: Local news site that earned bulk of their rankings for keyword “tpusa’s all American halftime show.”

For social media platforms, x.com led in visibility, with 755 Mobile News Box keyword rankings, with reddit.com followed in second place with 663 rankings. There was a big drop off to third place with instagram.com earning 316 keyword rankings. Instagram earned the most visibility rankings for keyword “superb owl” which has become a popular meme for each Super Bowl.

Insights

• I was surprised to see a couple of local newspaper sites (desertsun.com and pnj.com) make it into the top 10 publishers in Mobile News Box visibility for the Super Bowl keyword set. Each of the local sites was able to gain strong visibility by earning alternative halftime show keyword rankings. This was a smart search move in understanding their audience interest in the alternative halftime show and making sure they had an explainer on how to watch it.
• Visibility trends matched a publisher site’s known areas of topic authority. For example, espn.com gained strong visibility both before and after the game because of their authority for game analysis.
• When I saw that foxnews.com led in Mobile News Box visibility, I thought it was probably because of the search interest in the alternative TPUSA halftime show. But in fact, foxnews.com had more keyword rankings for “bad bunny” (47) than “kid rock” (22). They were also able to earn the most rankings for several core keywords such as “super bowl lx,” “super bowl halftime show,” and “super bowl.”
• Basic explainers (when is, how to watch, who is performing etc.) still performed well in Mobile News Box rankings, even though the growing influence of AI Overviews in longer keyword queries was noted. This is a trend to monitor throughout the year to track how much AIOs erode into publisher visibility for basic informational event queries.

The most important takeaway is to make sure you are doing a post-mortem analysis for tentpole events like the Super Bowl so that you can gauge the visibility impact from AIOs and social media platforms on your publication’s SERP visibility.

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