Who Clicked Britney?
Written by Andrew Pearlman (contact - e-mail) -- October 11th, 2007 | Recommend ThisLove her or hate her, like most celebrities, America has a morbid fascination with the trials and tribulations of Britney Spears. Through the good times and the bad, while PR firms go mad, without seatbelts or hair, entering rehab or needing an au pair, Britney is still here. Now, say what you will about the Mousekateer gone… well, wild. The fact remains, the people want to know what exactly Britney is up to (or what she could possibly be thinking). So let’s take a trip down memory lane in the shoes of Britney Spears, as we look at her web traffic over the last year.
The quick take away from this graph is that a few big events managed to drive explosive search activity. I started to wonder - Was her VMA performance scandalous enough to get more “curiosity seekers” searching for pictures of her than the droves that came out to do so during her “no underwear” phase in December? Turns out that it was a really close battle but once again, celebrity nudity beats out even the worst performance.
I also dug deeper into the actual terms driving these searches to examine the peaks and let’s just say there were a lot of reoccurring themes. But where are these 2 million people going after they search? I took 4 of the top 10 Britney terms over the last three months and used Search Analytics to find the top 5 domains visited after searching on these terms.
That is a lot of searchers about just one person, and - this may seem shocking - not many people were looking for her music. The term ‘Britney Spears Lyrics’ is the 19th most searched term and the word ‘music’ doesn’t show up until about the 208th. In fact out of the top 50 Britney Spears related search terms, only 8 are G-rated (2 of which are misspellings), 4 include ‘VMA,’ 4 are about her shaved head, 3 include Paris Hilton and the rest are… well, dirty. And that’s just the top 50.
All in all, we have seen 13,534 unique queries, of these 7% misspelled “Britney” or “Spears” or both and 26% of all queries include one of these words: nude, pictures, topless, crotch, or sex. I was going to include other words in this analysis, such as “underwear,” but I figured someone could legitimately be looking up the news story (yeah right). It’s been a long hard road for the star but I think everyone waits with great trepidation, wondering what she could possibly do next.
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October 11th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Hilarious… absolutely hilarious.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Great post. I would love to see this for a bunch of other celeb mishaps: A-Rod, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan!
October 12th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Britney is one of the first major superstars where instant gratification has been immediately available anytime via the Web - in its mature stage.
Previous comparable superstars - Madonna & Micheal Jackson - reached theirs peaks from the 80s to the mid 90s - before the Web existed or just before reaching mainstream popularity. So hard copy fan mags, TV & radio were still the only outlets for promoting and for public curiosity satisfaction. Many top celebs did not even have an official site until the late 90s.
It would have been intriguing to see what effect the Web would have had on Marilyn Monroe, Elvis or The Beatles’ fame, if it was available during the 50s and early 60s’s. They once experienced the same public obsession as Britney is now.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:13 am
You are right Miss Universe, what year by the way? ;) It’s unfortunate we don’t have data on those past celebrities. We do have data to some extent on Michael Jackson’s latest trial but I’m not really inclined to run it. I would imagine that the Beatles or Elvis’ performance on the Ed Sullivan show would of eclipsed Britney no problem. Except I think people would be looking them up for different reasons. I guess we’ll just have to wonder. We do however have a lot of possibilities left…. Paula Abdul? Pamela Anderson and of course let’s not forget about Linday and Paris but that would be too easy.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
These stats are way off. And by way off I mean WAY off.
Too bad an NDA prevents me from saying more.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Love the connection between pop culture and clickstream. Really shows how far we can take web analytics.
October 13th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Makes a case for negative keywords in search marketing campaigns.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Guy — Not sure which stats you are referring to, but for the profile visitors I used only some very specific targeted Britney spears sites on the ones noted in the image. For the search terms I used anything containing Britney and Spears. I’d be curious to know which one you think is off base.
Charles — Would be really interesting to run some search analytics on key political terms and see a comparison of major candidates’ domains. You might have stumbled on a future post….
AP
October 24th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
this is boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 30th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Can you please help me try to figure out how to use this video?
I cannot seem to get it to work. http://www.britneyvideosite.com
November 27th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Hello to all over the world,My name is Tanya and Im 18 years old.I live in Nova Scotia Canada.Some of the things I like to do are sing,dance,write poetry,work at a clothing store part time and most of all being with friends.Enough about me.Im not a big fan of Britney Spears but I have alot of respect for her.I think some of her songs are catchy and want to make me get up a dance,But I do admit she does need a better singing voice.Shes pretty and fit and dresses revealing and sexy does that make her a bad person?No I dont think so.Im sick of people who waste time on hating stars and Britney Spears,like putting hate websites and fake pictures.Stars are human,They are allowed to make mistakes and fail just like us.The only difference is they make such a big deal just because they are on the television.Stop blaming things on stars,If you dont like her you can ignore or turn your head around.Besides stars and people in general get so caught up in what they do,so they do deserve a break.It would be nice if Britney Spears would take a break from the music work then maybe she would look after her babies properly.Then to come back new and refreshed to the music world.I like Britney Spears with brown hair because it makes her skin tone look better and looks mature.There are other things to worry about examples:health,poverty,high school,family and so many other things to worry about I can think of.People need to stop worrying about being someone else and how they look,I myself do take care of myself and have beauty time but at the same time I try to be myself and try to just be happy in life and I think a smile makes a person look nice.Some its the natural things you do to make yourself look beautiful.Now these are just my comments if you want to delete them feel free if you dont like them.If you want to email me about my comments,good or bad I would love to hear from you.If you want a friendly and open minded to talk to I’d love to hear from you too.Hope to hear from someone.
peace and love to all over the world
Tanya xxoxxo