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Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America

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The Lambert Edge - American Idol Prediction

May 20, 2009

It's time again for our American Idol season finale prediction. The chart of search volume for the two finalists, dramatic rocker Adam Lambert and boy-next-door Kris Allen would appear to make this prediction a no-brainer.

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Searches for "Adam Lambert" outnumber "Kris Allen" queries by a factor of 5-1. Closer examination of search variations on the two finalists reveal a Stacy Keibler Correction Coefficient lurking in the background. Of the top 100 search variations for Adam Lambert, 15% centered on his sexual orientation. In fact search variations for Kris Allen also demonstrate that searchers are less concerned with ability then with contestant's personal lives. The most common searches for Kris Allen center on his religious beliefs and questions about his wife.

Despite our ability to focus on singing ability, given the wide margin of queries, if searches correlate to popularity and vote, and I believe they do, advantage Adam Lambert.

If you want to learn more about our history making reality television show predictions, check out my book Click: What Millions of People do Online and Why it Matters.


Posted by Bill Tancer at 01:35 PM | (3) | (0)
In Categories Entertainment

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Comments

Hey, Bill. What happened? I read your book and thought it was great.

I, too, predicted that Adam Lambert would win based solely on the volume of Google searches that followed each episode.

What's the deal? Was it fixed?

See these posts...

http://www.blippitt.com/american-idol-season-8-winner-prediction-adam-lambert

http://www.blippitt.com/kris-allen-wins-american-idol-season-8-what-happened

Posted by Chris Monty | May 20, 2009 10:27 PM

Hi Bill,

As fellow data junkies, we Click'ed through, digging into the data a bit deeper over the past six weeks using several disparate sources, the last of which (Google Insights) led us to pick the less obvious winner:
http://bit.ly/nZr8D

Enjoy!

Posted by ymarketing Search Analysts | May 20, 2009 10:54 PM

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Bill Tancer

General Manager, Global Research at Hitwise.

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