This article was originally written back in 2021, where we looked at how to use Search Trends to predict the outcome of Strictly Come Dancing…
Drumroll… Fanfare… A new era is underway.
Last night, the 2021 series of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ started properly with the first elimination show. Nadia Wadia and professional dance partner Neil Jones were the unfortunate couple to leave the show, losing out through a combination of judges’ scores and votes from the public.
There are still 14 couples left in the competition. So is there any way to impress your friends and pick out this year’s winner early on in the series?
There is one possibility. Don’t worry you won’t have to learn the difference between your fleckerl and heel-turn. Instead, you can monitor searches…
I’ve been living under a rock. What is ‘Strictly Come Dancing’?
‘Strictly’ is a British institution. Last year, over 13 million people the watched the final, as comedian Bill Bailey and his professional dance partner Oti Mabuse lifted the glitterball trophy. At 55, Bailey became the oldest winner of the show. And Mabuse was the first professional dancer to win back-to-back series.
So was this result unlikely or were the signs there?
The producers of ‘Strictly’ are famously protective over their data, not even sharing with other BBC shows. We only get to see the scores from the expert judges, which couples ended up in the bottom two each week and then in the final they announce an overall winner.
We have no idea how the couples are doing in the public vote each week. But instead we can fill that gap in our knowledge and go to Google Trends, to see if searches for particular celebrities are going up or down. Let’s look at the searches for some of the 2020 Strictly-celebs from just before the series started and up to week 3.
You can see spikes in searches for the celebrities when they were first announced. And then searches kick up again when the series began (which was later than usual due to Covid). At this stage, comic-actor Caroline Quentin and popstar HRVY were getting more searches than Bill Bailey.
If we move on a couple of weeks, we can see how Caroline Quentin’s searches drop off after she was eliminated. And crucially we see Bill Bailey’s searches peak in week 4 after his couples’ choice dance to the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight. This was his breakthrough moment.
And from that point on Bill Bailey enjoys higher searches than the other celebrities that would go on to join him in the final.
Conclusion
Just as one partner leads on the dancefloor, some measures move slightly ahead of others. These are called ‘leading indicators’. In this instance, search is a leading indicator of public-votes.
Chances are your business has some metrics that move sooner than others. Identifying and tracking this data can help improve how you forecast business performance.
At the time of writing, it’s too early to call this year’s ‘Strictly’ but keep watching the Searches…