Lewis to Win Idol, According to Hitwise Prediction

Beat-boxing Blake Lewis has the edge on Jordin Sparks for the title of American Idol according to one major Internet research firm.

According to Hitwise, which claims to track the online usage and searches of over 10 million Internet surfers.

As of the week ending May 19, Blake had .0045% of all search traffic monitored by Hitwise, versus .0036% for Sparks.

In addition, more searches that included the name "Blake Lewis" also contained references to his music and song choices-- although a lot were also inquiring into his sexual preference.

While Bill Tancer of the online marketing research firm concedes that Yahoo!'s keyword analysis  gives the edge to Jordin Sparks (Buzz also says the top search term for Lewis is "Blake Lewis Shirtless pics" ), Tancer points out that while Sparks had a higher percentage of Yahoo searches, Lewis had more Google searches. 
"Advantage Blake," he says in an e-mailed prediction.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.