Searching with the Stars: Chitika Insights Predicts Results for “Dancing with the Stars”

Can online search volume predict real voting results of game shows? Chitika Insights had this question in mind when we conducted our most recent study on ABC’s popular reality competition, Dancing with the Stars. If the winners were ranked by search volume, Chitika Insights finds that Carson Kressley and Anna Trebunskaya are most likely to be eliminated tomorrow after getting the least online interest among the group of “celebrity” competitors.

Chitika Insights analyzed a week’s sample of our network, consisting of hundreds of millions of impressions, for an off-beat take on the intersection of entertainment and online search. Each team is given a score, which is a combination of the judges’ marks (between 1 and 10) and public voting. The team with the lowest overall score is eliminated while the rest move onto the next round. The table below indicates the traffic to each team as share of web searches for these celebrities and their partners. Reality T.V. star and a member of the Kardashian clan, Rob Kardashian and his partner, Cheryl Burke, are the favourites to win, grabbing 13.5% of online traffic for Dancing with The Stars.

The outlier in the data is that, Chaz Bono has the highest search volume among all contestants, garnering 42% of all search results. That is, inspite of past voting and many followers indicating that he and his partner rank below-par in terms of performance. Perhaps, his background and consequent popularity are endearing him to fans, who willingly overlook his technical ability when it comes to dance routines. Get ready, Team Schwaz will be in this competition for awhile.

On the other end of the scale, David Arquette and Kym Johnson follow Carson Kressley’s team with 6.4% of search results, which is still a healthy advantage over Team Carson Anna. There is quite a battle brewing for the second place team with soccer star Hope Solo, actress Ricki Lake and HLN hostess Nancy Grace all garnering very similar levels of online traffic. Check back in with Chitika Insights after the show to see if our predictions were on the money.

UPDATE: Carson Kressley and Anna Trebunskaya were the eliminated pair, just as Chitika Insights predicted. Check out our predictions for Week 5 on Monday!