20
2008
Archuleta v. Cook – Battle of the David’s
If search terms are any indication, this week’s finale will be one of the closest in idol history. Search term data can provide insight into the popularity of reality television show contestants, both in terms of their overall popularity, as well as what Internet users are thinking about when they search on the contestant. For the battle-at-hand, the chart below shows how close the two Davids are in Internet popularity.
When we look at what search terms are associated with each contestant’s name, the call on who will win this week’s vote becomes even more muddled. Of the 325 searches that we analyzed for David Cook, there is a strong interest in his music, as well as the plight of his brother who is battling cancer. While David Archuleta leads in volume of searches, the nature of the 231 searches on his name that we analyzed show a negative focus on the contestant’s meddling father.
Based on the data we analyzed this week’s contest will come down to this week’s performance. If there are no surprises in their last songs, slight advantage to David Cook.
Interesting. Given how difficult it might be for some to spell “Archuleta” do you think that his “hits” would go up if you included in your search certain likely misspellings of the name – or would that just lead to false “double hits” if people searched once, realized they spelled it wrong, then searched again with the right spelling?
Jonathan, Very good point. We did check some spelling variations when doing the analysis. There was minimal volume on Archeleto, Arcoleto, Archileta, etc… Surprisingly, it appears that Idol fans are good spellers, who knew.