The Monkey Shack

The answer is, yes!

Now I don't follow American Idol. I have only watched one entire episode the past eight years. I didn't even know who the contestants were this season, but did know (thanks to Twitter) that tonight was the season finale. And while most everyone I've heard this morning thinks Adam Lambert will be this year’s champ, I think he will win for an entirely different reason.

Google.

I have never heard him or the other finalist, Kris Allen, sing, but I am tempted to run over to Wendover to put some money down on tonight's outcome. Online chatter and search volume correlates very closely with actual voting. It happened in the presidential election and its happening with American Idol. By looking at Google search trends (volume, demographic and geographic) for the past three seasons, patterns in the data appear that can predict the eventual winner of American Idol.

For example, in 2006, Taylor Hicks dominated much of the search volume from early March through the finale. Eventual runner-up Katharine McPhee passed Hicks for a brief window in late April and early May, but Hicks surpassed her and rode the momentum through the finale. In 2007, an analysis of search data revealed that Jordan Sparks received more related searches than Blake Lewis. Last year's competition saw the two finalists, David Cook and David Archuleta, trade jabs as the leader in search volume. But larger states, including Archuelta's birth state of Florida, leaned in Cook's favor and carried him to the title.

This year Lambert is crushing Allen in searches, currently holding an almost 4:1 margin over him. And unlike previous seasons, where the leaders have traded top search position week to week down the stretch, Lambert has held a sizable lead for the past month. The only state leaning towards Allen at this point in his home state of Alabama. Even the states which had strong support for Danny Gokey, the contestant voted off last week, show Lambert running away. For a marketing geek like me, the implications of utilizing search data to predict consumer and market trends is enormous.

Search volume utilizing Google Insights. Lambert Allen



Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 American Idol winner, Adam Lambert.