WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tracking web searches for new songs, video games and movies can predict which ones will be big hits, but often not much better than traditional methods, researchers at Yahoo Inc reported on Monday.
And they confirmed earlier findings that showed searches associated with diseases, such as Google's Google Flu Trends, were not any more effective than traditional methods for predicting the spread of infections.
Tracking web searches worked the best in predicting how a new video game would sell, Yahoo's Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman said.
"Here we show that what consumers are searching for online can also predict their collective future behavior days or even weeks in advance," they wrote in a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Specifically we use search query volume to forecast the opening weekend box-office revenue for feature films, first-month sales of video games, and the rank of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, finding in all cases that search counts are highly predictive of future outcomes," they added.
"We considered four different classes of web activity. At least three of them we do a pretty good job of predicting outcomes," Goel said in a telephone interview.
Counting the number of searches related to new songs was the least effective, they found.
But Goel said using Billboard Top 100 listings to predict whether a song would stay at the top of the charts worked as well as or better than counting web searches.
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And they confirmed earlier findings that showed searches associated with diseases, such as Google's Google Flu Trends, were not any more effective than traditional methods for predicting the spread of infections.
Tracking web searches worked the best in predicting how a new video game would sell, Yahoo's Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman said.
"Here we show that what consumers are searching for online can also predict their collective future behavior days or even weeks in advance," they wrote in a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Specifically we use search query volume to forecast the opening weekend box-office revenue for feature films, first-month sales of video games, and the rank of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, finding in all cases that search counts are highly predictive of future outcomes," they added.
"We considered four different classes of web activity. At least three of them we do a pretty good job of predicting outcomes," Goel said in a telephone interview.
Counting the number of searches related to new songs was the least effective, they found.
But Goel said using Billboard Top 100 listings to predict whether a song would stay at the top of the charts worked as well as or better than counting web searches.
� Continued...
Watch Movies Online
