27 May 2009 | Author: Andrew Girdwood Head of Strategy

Who won the Premiership according to Google?

Google unofficially entered the prediction market by releasing a widget which successfully calculated that Norway would win the Eurovision Song Contest.

So is it possible to do the same for the Premiership League?

Using Google's Insight for Search and defining the query parameters as 2009, the United Kingdom and the 'Soccer' sub-category, we can create a Google-fied Premier League table based on search popularity.

Who won the Premiership according to Google?

According to the prediction, Newcastle United easily avoids relegation and finish within the top ten. West Brom also narrowly escapes the drop, but Middlesbrough goes down.

Manchester United wins, Chelsea puts on a poor performance, finishing outside the top four as Tottenham swoops up to take the number four position. Arsenal rises to second position and Liverpool drops down to third in the league.

The 'prediction by popularity' method created by the Mountain View search engine only accurately predicts Manchester United and Manchester City's positions in the table correctly. However, the average difference between Google's result and the actual Premier League is only 2.6 places.

Could this mean hardcore gamblers may first take a trip to Google's Insight for Search before making their way to the bookies? Maybe - it could certainly give rookies a better insight into where to place their bets rather than relying on pot luck.

However, we here at bigmouthmedia are reluctant (in this case) to put our money where our mouth is and instead hope to explore the depths of this exciting new idea before laying out our hard-earned pennies.