Digital Connections

BBC SPOTY 2010 & Google Insights: A Wrap Up

Unfortunately Google Insights didn’t prove to be an accurate crystal ball for the 2010 BBC Sports personality of the year, unlike in 2009.

The award was won by AP McCoy with Phil Taylor second and Jess Ennis third. In fact Jess’ third place was the closest that Google Insights came to predicting the winner, with a late significant surge in the number of Ennis related searches on Friday and Saturday.

Google’s “interest” in David Haye, and Graeme Swann proved to be a pair of red herrings, and Google’s lack of interest in AP McCoy (and Tony McCoy) and Phil Taylor proved equally inaccurate.

Twitter fared somewhat better, on Sunday night (albeit during the show); Taylor, Haye and Ennis were "trending" in the UK – but nothing registering for AP McCoy.

After the programme @HonestFrank released the SPOTY voting figures..

1     AP McCoy                293,152  (41.98%)
2     Phil Taylor             72,095     (10.33%)
3     Jessica Ennis         62,953     (9.02%)
4     Lee Westwood        58,640     (8.4%)
5     Graeme McDowell    52,108    (7.46%)
6     Tom Daley              50,763    (7.27%)
7     Mark Cavendish       44,170     (6.33%)
8     Amy Williams         43,056     (6.17%)
9     Graeme Swann        13,767     (1.97%)
10    David Haye             7,538     (1.08%)

A runaway winner it seems, which didn’t even flick Google’s needle.

On the other hand at Google Insights can be used to get something right. #uksnow

And the Winner of the 2010 BBC Sports Personality of the Year (according to Google Insights) is...

Last year I wrote a post about whether "Google Insights for Search" could accurately predict the BBC's Sports Personality of The Year.

And guess what, it did!

@Worldhood even slapped a tenner on Ryan Giggs AT 2-1 making himself a tidy profit - as the bookies had lined up Jenson Button.

So could Google Insights predict the SPOTY winner for a second year in a row?

According to Google, Mark Cavendish (again), AP McCoy, Amy Williams, Phil "The Power" Taylor and Graeme McDowell – have all had great years but Google is saying ... "its not you".

The BBC announced the nominations on the 29th November; however this wasn't followed by an immediate spike for any athlete. However we can see two significant spikes over the past two weeks.

The first for David Haye and the second for Graeme Swann.

Graeme Swann's popularity can probably and safely be put down to the Ashes, just as last year Andy Murray's spike was down to the ATP finals.

David Haye's spike is also interesting - however this also coincides with his ringside presence at last weekend’s Amir Khan fight and subsequent interviews and rumours surrounding a potential fight with either of the Klitschko brothers.

Lee Westwood has also been in the news this week due to his battle with Tiger Woods to be World number one, and this may be behind his upturn after the 12^th December.

Rather annoyingly the bookmakers massively confuse the issue as their favourites are virtually the exact opposite to Google Search results.

So I guess this year’s conclusion is that it’s too difficult and confusing to call.

Pure data would suggest (and wrongly in my opinion) David Haye, but the most natural Google searches seem to be around the rather unlikely winner of Tom Daley.

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UPDATE @ 18.57pm on Sunday 19th December

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Ran the search again on Sunday evening before the start of the programme and the past 24 hours has seen a massive increase in the number of Google searches for Jessica Ennis. (see below)

Is this sudden burst in searches going to identify the winner??? Lets see.....

Apple takeover Skysports.com on #WorldCup2018 day

On the day that England were subjected to another World Cup humiliation, I quite liked this smart media-buy from the chaps at Apple.

A cool takeover of the SkySports homepage, on what even by SkySports standards must have been a high traffic day.

 

Shame that people clicked through to read about massive disappointment - but if we'd won then the mediabuy would have have been a stroke of genius.

Made even better as it only works on Google Chrome and Firefox - leaving Internet Exporer in the cold (ha).

Nice creative, smart mediabuy, shame about the result.

(Also a shame that I'd just done a Google search on Blake's 7 before recording)