Posts Tagged ‘strictly come dancing’

What Are People Strictly Come Searching For?

December 9th, 2010

Throughout this series of Strictly Come Dancing I have looked at the search volumes for the celebrities taking part and tried to make conclusions – or perhaps, more realistically, assumptions (or wild guesses) – as to what the various patterns meant for the celebrities and their chances. There has already been a modicum of success for my predictions as I suggested a few weeks ago that Ann Widdecombe wouldn’t go and win the show – she and Anton waltzed out of the show last week. Not quite Mystic Meg just yet, though if my week one assertion that the data made it clear Kara Tointon would win the show comes to fruition then I may be unable to control my smug face for an hour or two.

Anyway, today I’ve taken another look at some search data for the remaining celebrities, again using Google’s Insights for Search tool, looking at what people are searching for around our celebrities beyond just their name. Starting with the current bookies’ favourite Matt Baker, as an ex-Blue Peter and Countryfile presenter you may think that he would be an odd kind of pin up. However, he is clearly one for the ladies as the top ten searches around him include ‘matt baker married’ and ‘matt baker wife’. Lots of women throughout the country using search to see whether they might have a shot with the ex-gymnast. Not to be outdone, the top rising searches for my top tip for success, Kara Tointon, include the keywords ‘fhm’ and ‘kara tointon fhm’ as people presumably are searching for in-depth, cutting edge interviews and opinion pieces about her. Ahem.

Moving on, it has been widely reported in the news today that Gavin Henson thinks it might be time to move on from his ex-fiance Charlotte Church, but the search data suggests that the British public aren’t quite ready to let it go, as ‘charlotte church’ appears 4th in the list of top searches for Gavin. We do love a good celebrity romance – failed or otherwise. This is further borne out by the searches that have been made around Pamela Stephenson as ‘billy connolly’ is 6th in the list of top searches for her. We also as a nation seem to be not just a little bit obsessed with how good she looks for her age, with the term ‘pamela stephenson age’ experiencing ‘breakout’ increases in search volume over the last few months – that’s increases of over 5000%. I for one hope to be getting full marks for my Viennese Waltz when I’m 61!

For Scott Maslen the data is not looking too hot, as only searches including the words ‘strictly’ and ‘eastenders’ make it into the top ten and rising searches list for him. He obviously isn’t having the same effect on the women of the country as Gavin or Matt. Also, worryingly for his chances of success in this weekend’s semi-final, his name has seen the lowest search volume of all the remaining celebrities over last 90 days. This combined with already having appeared in the bottom two last week make me think he’s going to have to dance the dance of his life on Saturday to stay in. As Gavin is also a bottom two survivor, I foresee battle of the boys in the bottom two this week between Gavin and Scott. We shall see!

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Search Consultant at Reform

Can Widders win it?

November 12th, 2010

There has been a lot of buzz recently around Ann Widdecombe’s amazing ‘performances’ on Strictly. Many people are even suggesting that she could take the ‘John Sergeant Effect’ to a whole new level – perhaps even winning the show. While the purists are bemoaning the reduction of this dancing show to what Alesha Dixon dubbed ‘more a comedy sketch than a dance routine’, only the most curmudgeonly of sticks in the mud would suggest that she doesn’t make entertaining viewing.

So, is she going to win?

Well, I still think not. Google Insights for search, which allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific time frames (amongst other things) provides some interesting viewing. A few weeks ago I stuck my neck out and suggested Kara Tointon would win the show this year, so I took a look at a comparison of Google search volumes since the beginning of September between her and Ann. According to Google Insights both celebrities have seen an increase in search volume of over 5000% since the beginning of September. This figure may be much higher, but after 5000% Google stops giving you a breakdown of exactly what the increase is – suffice to say it’s massive.

So, both celebrities have seen a huge increase in search volume. Not particularly surprising I suppose, and it doesn’t really help in determining who will win the show. No fear – Google Insights also gives us an index of traffic volumes. They don’t provide absolute search volume numbers, but the data is normalised and presented on a scale from 1-100. So, since September, Ann’s search volume on this scale of 1-100 was at 6, and Kara’s at 21.What does that mean then I hear you ask? Well, it means that 250% more people are searching for Kara than Ann – or, for every one person that searches for Ann, 3.5 search for Kara. If we were to assume that people searching for a celebrity implies enhanced popularity then this would suggest Kara is way out ahead. That is quite an assumption I realise, but it at least gives some perspective on the idea that Ann is now the runaway favourite.

The chart above shows the search volumes since the beginning of September, again on Google’s index scale of 1-100. There are the predictable spikes on the weekends with the live shows, and within them, I think, further evidence that Ann won’t win Strictly this year. Apart from one week in mid-October, Kara’s spike is much steeper than Ann’s. On the days of the show – when the crucial public vote is taking place – more people are interested in Kara then they are in Ann.

All this is just my interpretation of course, and there are 7 other contestants in the show that I haven’t even looked at… but my money is still on Kara!

UPDATE: Reform looks to go for double or nothing in 2011′s Strictly Come Dancing challenge.

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Search Consultant at Reform

You’ll like this – not a lot – but you’ll like it

October 21st, 2010

Week two in the Strictly Come Dancing house. Hmmm, there’s a chance I’m mixing my reality TV show metaphors there, but the point is another week has gone by, and Strictly Come Dancing has lost a little bit of magic as Paul Daniels ‘danced’ his last dance on Saturday night. In this, the second installment of our Strictly Come Searching investigation, I’ve come across an interesting inverse correlation between search volume and social media coverage for the Strictly celebrities.

The chart below was put together by social media monitors Brandwatch, who are observing social media coverage of our Strictly Come Dancing stars this year. They have developed an index measuring not only the volume of conversations going on, but also the sentiment in those conversations, be it positive or negative.

The snapshot above, ranked by volume, shows that this week most people are talking about Anne Widdecombe, Goldie and Paul Daniels, with Tina O’Brien and Felicity Kendal way down at the bottom. However, we have put the chart below together from Bing search volume data, showing the number of searches performed over the last 7 days for the Strictly celebrity names. In terms of search volume, Tina O’Brien and Felicity Kendal are way ahead of the pack this week, and Goldie is at the bottom of the list.

This is a truly interesting insight into the online behaviour of Strictly Come Dancing fans! The celebrities that are being talked about the most on the web are not the ones that people are searching for the most.

Tina O’Brien’s position at the top in terms of search volume could be put down to people searching to see why she didn’t dance on Saturday night (chicken pox in case you weren’t one of the people searching). Also, the appearance of Paul Daniels and Goldie near the top in terms of social media coverage must be due to people dissecting their exits from the show. I’m sure that not many people would argue with the suggestion that Anne Widdecombe has been the real star of the show so far in this series, so the buzz around her name is also quite easily explained. It has been suggested by the water cooler here at Reform that more people might be searching for Felicity Kendal and Pamela Stephenson because they don’t know much about them as yet – a generation of people online that missed out on The Good Life. If that is the case, then it might also explain why not as many people are talking about them – they are the enigmas of the show, people are still searching for information about them.

As a final note for this week, I stuck my neck above the parapet in last week’s blog and suggested that Kara Tointon would win Strictly this year. This data only cements my opinion further as people are searching for her AND talking about her. Time will tell!

UPDATE: We were right in 2010, but lets see how 2011′s Strictly Come Searching challenge fares.

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Search Consultant at Reform

Strictly Come Searching

October 15th, 2010

Summer is over. Autumn is here. But it’s ok, because Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor are back on our screens, and with them comes the countdown to Christmas. I know it’s far too early to be talking about Christmas, but with 14 Contestants on Strictly you know that at the very most there are 14 weeks to go – less, probably, knowing how the producers like the odd double elimination or three-way ‘dance off’ towards the end. It is the Saturday night equivalent of an advent calendar… with glitter balls.

Everybody talks about it. ‘OMG did you see Anne Widdecombe?!’… ‘Did you hear that she’s farting through training?’… ‘Gavin Henson’s abs. That’s all’… ‘Paul Daniels – definitely more tragic than magic, but Debbie McGee is still cute as a button!’ Here at Reform it is no different, and the conversation recently turned to how we could combine our excitement over all things Strictly with our expertise in the world of search. So, over the next few months we will be doing a series of blogs – Strictly Come Searching if you will (see what we did there?!).

So we have set in motion some data collection which we will be delving into each week and as the data set grows we will examine, analyse and to a certain extent poke fun at what we find. This week as a starter for ten we have looked at Bing UK search volume data collected from Microsoft AdIntelltigence. We looked at the celebrity dancers’ names and tracked the search volume for each person over the past week, the past month and the year to see what we could find.

My assumption had been that the pre-Strictly search volumes of the celebrities would vary slightly dependent on their level of fame – for example, I had assumed more people would have been searching for Michelle Williams, Destiny’s Child singer and Grammy Award winner, than would perhaps have been searching for one of our home grown stars. Well, it’s clear that I had failed to grasp just how important soaps are to us in the UK. More people searched for the beautiful Kara Tointon on Bing in the last 12 months than searched for the rest of the contestants put together. The only other celebrities that stand out on the chart of the last year are Patsy Kensit, Tina O’Brien and, to a lesser extent, Scott Maslan. Go Holby, Corrie and Eastenders!

So, seeing that some of our soap stars have a pre-Strictly advantage, I took a look at the search volume data for the seven days surrounding the first live show after which the first celebrity would be voted off. We still see that Kara is out in the lead, though people searching for Felicity Kendal on Saturday night shot up from nowhere. Searches for Jimi Mistry, Scott Maslan, and Anne Widdecombe all shot up by over 1000%, with Pamela Stephenson not too far behind with a percentage increase of over 800%. Bizarrely, the numbers of people searching for Michelle Williams on Saturday night actually dropped 70%, but as you would expect everyone else saw a peak in interest.

For most of the celebrities the number of people searching for their name spikes on the Saturday night, then falls immediately on the Sunday – though Tina O’Brian, Matt Baker and (once again) Kara Tointon out-perform the rest of the ensemble here by actually seeing search volume increase into Sunday.

So what kinds of conclusions can be drawn or statements can be made from these results. Is it possible to predict who will be voted off and who will last in the show based on what we can see here? Are the people searching for the celebrities the same people that pick up the phone and vote to keep their favourites in the show? Well, time will tell. The phone vote in Strictly only accounts for half of a celebrity’s overall score, so however popular they may be, if they are a terrible dancer then that will put them more at risk of being sent home.

Goldie and Peter Shilton – the two celebrities that faced the axe on Sunday night having been in the bottom two after the judges and viewers votes were tallied up – made up two of the bottom four celebrities in terms of the number of searches performed on the Saturday night. Neither of them had set the world alight with their dancing performance. To put it politely.

Matt Baker and Michelle Williams made up the other two in the bottom four in terms of search volume on the night of the live show. Perhaps they are at risk of early departure if their standard of dancing drops off. Having said that we can see that searches for Matt have increased in the week following the live show, so maybe he is in a safer place – particularly as his former life as a gymnast has developed in him a keen level of timing and grace.

This is of course all just speculation , and it will be interesting to see if over time any more interesting patterns come to light. In terms of conclusions for this week… making a wild statement based on search volume (and a little bit on her dancing), Kara Tointon is going to win Strictly Come Dancing 2010. You heard it here first.

UPDATE: Find out who’s going to win Strictly Come Dancing in 2011

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Search Consultant at Reform