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Apprentice 2011: Tom has late search surge to go favourite
July 15, 2011
Series 7 of The Apprentice draws to a close on Sunday 17 July with the much anticipated interview round, where the final four candidates will be grilled by Lord Sugar’s toughest interview panel yet. If popular opinion is anything to go by, then the UK Internet population want Tom Pellereau to win.
Looking at the top search terms driving traffic to the BBC Apprentice website over the last 12 weeks, 21-year-old Susan Ma is actually the most popular candidate from the last four, with 1.03% of all searches including her name. Interestingly, of all the candidates from this year’s show, Melody Hossaini was by far the most searched for, with over 3% of the total searches driving traffic to the Apprentice website.
Looking at the above table Tom is a noticeable absentee. Over the last 12 weeks both Leon and Zoe, who were fired by Lord Sugar in weeks 8 and 9 respectively accounted for more searches than Tom. However, there has been a late surge in searches for Tom and looking at the latest search data, the inventor from London has risen above the other candidates.
In the last week alone searches for Tom have increased by 450% putting him as the people’s favourite ahead of the other three finalists Susan, Jim and Helen. Of course, Lord Sugar doesn’t give a monkey’s about popular opinion and is not going to hire based on online searches, but what this does show us is who has the online brand equity to be successful post-Apprentice.
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Posted by James Murray at 02:30 PM
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Comments
I'm not surprised Melody was so popular previously - she had *ahem* a lot of character to put it politely. Personally I hope Tom wins. Guess we'll find out on Sunday :)
Posted by 8 Gram Gorilla | July 16, 2011 01:51 PM
Great question Jenni. The answer is both, the bar chart with the photos includes all search variations, whereas the line chart only includes searches for the specific name. Because I was a bit pushed for time when I looked at this last week, the line chart is a snapshot of searches for their full names over time.
Interestingly, when I had time to look this morning in a bit more detail, the results were pretty much exactly the same, with Tom the stand out candidate for online searches including things like 'tom from the apprentice'.
This is an interesting insight in itself that searches for the full name were representative of searches for the candidate as a whole.
James
Posted by James Murray | July 18, 2011 02:56 PM
I am glad Tom the underdog won the show! Good luck to him, I did think Helen was very good though.
Posted by SEO In Kent | July 19, 2011 04:55 PM
But does this take into account searches like 'tom from the apprentice' and so on, or just their full names?
Posted by Jenni | July 15, 2011 03:09 PM