Good press vs. bad press: which generates more search buzz?
March 9th, 2009 | Published in Web Analytics | 1 Comment
A little PR can go along way in getting your name searched online. Of course, this rule holds true for positive and negative news alike. So what feeds our urge to search more, good press or bad press? Let’s look at three anecdotes from recent history and see what we observe about human nature.
Alex Rodriguez: World Record vs. Steroid Scandal
A-Rod had an eventful past three years. In August 2007, he became the youngest man in baseball history to hit 500 homeruns. About a year later, he filed for divorce. And then just recently, he admitted to steroid use.
Interestingly, his world record (Marker B) only generated about half as much search intrigue as his divorce (Marker E) or his steroid news (Marker F). I find it most interesting that searchers seemed more interested in the divorce than the steroid news. Just shows how America loves a good love scandal.
Miley Cyrus: Sold-out Concerts vs. Vanity Fair Embarrassment
Miley Cyrus hit the tween-age scene as Hannah Montana in late 2006. As her TV show grew in popularity, so did her music, which generated nearly $30M in tour revenue. This teenage star came crashing down in mid-2008 when questionable photos from a Vanity Fair photoshoot leaked to the public.
Miley (and Hannah) were consistently popular in searches around the time she was selling out arenas. But look at that spike after the Vanity Fair fiasco (Marker C)! Unfortunately for Miley, the search buzz around her name in that small time period pretty much equaled all of the searches for her name to date at that point. She’s learning her PR lessons young!
Michael Phelps: Gold Medals vs. Guilty for Drug Use
Michael Phelps became an American icon in the 2004 Olympics when he emerged as a gold medal winner. By the time the 2008 Olympics were over, he’d annihilated seven world records and brought home fourteen gold medals in his short career. Then in 2009, Michael appeared in the British tabloids smoking marijuana, and it all went downhill from there, sponsorships and all.
It’s hardly reasonable to compare search volume in 2004 and 2008, but it is interesting to see the amount of intrigue Michael’s first gold medals created online. His unhuman performance in the 2008 Olympics (Marker D) clearly gave the world Phelps fever, which is more than evident in the graph above. And interestingly, unlike our other two anecdotes, the impact of Michael’s bad press (Marker F) didn’t quite amount to the buzz around his athleticism. Lucky Mike.
So I guess our lessons are as follows (of course, they’re anecdotal, so take them with a grain of salt):
- People are far more interested in learning about your dirt than your achievements.
- If you win 12 gold medals and break 7 world records, not all the rules of nature will apply to you when you screw up (but you might still lose a big sponsorship!).
Are there any other celebrities whose search buzz you think I should profile? Post a comment or shoot me a message.
March 9th, 2009at 8:37 am(#)
Michael Jackson. He’s the king of pop, and dirt. I noticed, when he announced a tour lately, a lot of media were more interested in showing photos of his face.
Of course this also brings to light that there are probably MORE stories about Jackson’s dirt than his actual music.