Like any American Idol fan, I’m very curious who is going to be named the American Idol winner this evening. In fact, I’m so curious, I don’t want to wait. I’d rather use the data one can find on the Internet to try and predict who is going to win between Kris Allen and Adam Lambert.
The first thing I did was to look at the Google Trends data.
Google Trends is an offering from Google Labs that allows one to compare the relative search traffic on multiple search terms. It is one the best sources of live (or nearly so) data from Google.
From this chart, it’s clear that more people are searching for info on Adam than Kris, but this is not surprising, as Adam’s “uniqueness” makes him more interesting.
It doesn’t appear that data from yesterday was available in Google Trends when I ran this report this morning. If they add it later today, I’ll rerun the report.
Next, I looked at the data returns from DialIdol.
DialIdol.com attempts to predict the voting intensity for each contestant by monitoring the number of busy signals each is receiving. Their accuracy was impressive early this season, but has been sketchy at best the last few weeks.
And these numbers are close enough that it’s not really possible to use them for predictive purposes.
I then looked up a number of data points online:
| Adam Lambert | Kris Allen | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google SERPs | 9,970,000 | 3,500,000 | ||
| Google Blog Search SERPs | 440,358 | 222,773 | ||
| SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty | 53% | 34% | ||
| Twitter Followers | 7,937 | 14,965 |
Google SERPs refers to the number of Search Engine Results Pages, or the number of pages that are returned when one searches for that term in Google. Google Blog Search SERPs is the same thing, except limited to Google Blog Search engine. Together, they reflect the amount of buzz Adam and Kris are receiving online.
SEOmoz is a developer of search engine optimization tools in Seattle, Washington. Their Keyword Difficulty tool analyzes a wide range of data points to determine the competitiveness of a particular search term.
In each of these, Adam scored substantially higher. This is no surprise. We know the buzz for Adam is much higher than it is for Kris.
Lastly, I looked at the number of Twitter followers each American Idol finalist had. This was a surprise. Kris has nearly two times the followers that Adam does. It’s not unreasonable that the universes of Twitter followers and of voters have a large intersection.
In short, the numbers seem to lean strongly in Adam’s direction, but the Twitter followers data point really sticks with me. I don’t see any reason to change my prediction from last night that Kris is going to win.
But it’s probably going to be very close.
[…] This post was Twitted by redcapeco – Real-url.org […]
They are actually not allowed to “Twitter” if they’re still a finalist. So all the Kris Allen and Adam Lambert twitters are fake. 🙂
You can get more info about their twitters at Rickey.org
Even if that is the case (that the accounts are fake), it doesn’t devalue the usage of their number of followers as a data point. 🙂
Ok. I hope no one’s following those anymore.
You could actually view the numbers of “fans” in their Facebook pags (the fan pages).
Their most popular FB Fanpages:
Adam has 172,693 fans
Kris has 61,283 fans
Just a suggestion. Thanks bye. =)
As of this morning, thousands of people are still following each.
The FaceBook fan page numbers are a great addition to the dataset. Thanks!
There’s no question that the majority of the data points to a win by Adam, but something still tells me it will be Kris. The long period of time where Adam has been the presumptive winner may have lead to apathy last night. And the legions of tweens that love Kris may well be the world’s fastest texters.
The only difference between the two voting camps last night is that Kris’ teenage fans were more adept at power texting last night, and that may have given Kris the edge. And of course all the gay haters that voted against Adam, they’ve made themselves very visible. It’s a shame it may come down to who has the most technically savvy fans, and not talent. But I’m still hoping for an Adam win. Either way Adam has surpassed American idol already…he’s the World’s Idol now. A popularity contest only goes so far, at the end of the day it’s about the quality of music you produce and longevity. Adam we’re waiting with anticipation on your next move, and I’ll be putting my money where my mouth is, and buying whatever you bring out. Much love to you.
They thing that has interested me is how little Adam’s likely sexual preferences have mattered. Typically, such things are much bigger deals in the United States. Maybe we’re finally growing up as a nation.
I still think Kris is going to win, but I think Adam is going to sell more albums. As a marketing guy, I think that’s the more important measure. 😉