If you’re really into American Idol like Michelle and I are you may have visited Dial Idol, a website that provides predictions about which contestant will win or lose each each week. The predictions are based on analysis of statistics gathered by their software, which allows users to cast their votes with their computer and a dial-up modem. The analysis is rather clever and generally accurate; it’s based largely on the number of busy signals encountered. With tens of millions of votes cast every week, not every call can be answered at once, and the difficulty in getting through can be used to gauge the behavior of people not using the Dial Idol software.
Mashable has an article today about another predictor of Idol results: Google. The theory is that you can see who Google users (i.e. everybody) are more interested in based on the number of searches for different contestants. Mashable looks at the Google statistics for past American Idol contests and makes a good case for the predictive power of the search engine. This year, if history is any guide, there’s a pretty clear front runner.
Google certainly seems to have the pulse of the people these days, and unlike subject specific tools like Dial Idol, Google is a generic tool. American Idol isn’t the only contest to be predicted by analyzing search traffic.