Search trends have been credited for correctly forecasting an American Idol winner in the past. Today, SEO.com writes that Google Trends results could be indicative of today's primary winners as "The amount of Google searches for a candidate’s last name has directly correlated with the winner of that state in every primary and caucus to date." McCain and Obama have the largest number of searches.
I notice Dr. Paul is not tracked.
ReplyDeleteAll things being equal -- this is probably a good way to forecast from a Wisdom of Crowds / Supercrunching standpoint.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't think you can overlook that Obama has been more active on the internet than any other candidate (in this election, and possibly any other).
These figures don't account for the general buzz from the viral videos and online conversation related to Obama. And I'm not sure that this buzz would directly translate into votes.
Don't get me wrong -- I hope Obama does win.
I have to agree with Kai. This data does not stand for transversal targets. But shows a pretty good image of what internauts are looking for.
ReplyDeleteOn merican Idol and other teeneger and stuff should work as a great parameter for messuring, because the error margin is lower
Hi there.
ReplyDeleteWe also crunched some web 2.0 number crunches, compiled Google Trends + Yahoo + YouTube + Facebook + MySpace + BlogSearch and we believe that the next president will be...
Hillary Clinton (1st in MySpace and Google, 2nd in Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo! and Blogosphere).
and:
#2 - Barack Obama (1st in Facebook, Yahoo! and the Blogosphere, 2nd in Link Popularity, 3rd in YouTube).
#3 - John McCain (2nd in Google, 3rd in the Blogosphere and Yahoo!).
Detailed results and methodology here ›
that was way too many crunches in my first sentence, sorry ;)
ReplyDelete1) Ron Paul is not mentioned. Seeing as how he has a big internet following, I bet he would be a spike on the graph.
ReplyDelete2) Likewise, to Kai, Ron Paul is more active on the internet than Obama.