The winner of SYTYCD was set from the start of the show based on their state support base.
This post is around the geeky element of the show, what effect does search and population have on the winner of a reality TV show.
The interesting point around So You Think You Can Dance is the heavy focus around Sydney, with the show being filmed there and a number of Sydney based choreographers being selected for each weeks routines. This may be the biggest issue with the show and seems to have an effect on the final 2, Talia from QLD, and Charlie from NSW. It seems that haven’t a contestant from their state seems to have a large effect on potential TV audience.
The map and chart below shows the visitor activity across Google search queries, as dancers get voted off, the support from each state seems to also reduce. So was the winner set before the show even started based on their state support base? If Charlie was from a bigger city than Dubbo it is likely that he would have won the competition, Talia was a great dance but its a game based on numbers and in the end Brisbane viewers voted more.
The Interesting change has been for the last 30 days of the show, there has been a complete loss of audience interest from outside the 3 key markets QLD, NSW, VIC. It seems that two of the least offensive and what some would call under dog’s are the final two. Based on search traffic it should have been Penny that would have one as she was the only contestant who actually showed up within Google trends. Google doesnt show data from the last 3 days but it seems to be consistent that there is a spike each week around the show, but outside these times why does no-one have any interest in the show?
So the Winner of the Show for 2009 is Talia. If you want the direct link to Talia’s dance profile, even Ben predicted that Talia would win the competition, from our research it would seem as if Penny would have been the winner.
The interesting facts around the website traffic showed that all along QLD & NSW were the largest audiences in terms of Google searches. The significance of this show is that Talia “the winner” and Penny “injured” were the only contestants to generate enough interest to show up in Google trends. 
The final show generated a massive amount of interest both online in within social networks such as Twitter & Facebook. The spike is significant enough for most advertisers should always ensure they purchase more coverage in the final show. Also based on the spike in search volumes it is likely that fans were looking for more details that were provided in www.ten.com.au/dance the offical website was slow to provide updates. This is a massive potential audience spike that Network 10 had been building over the last 4 months was lost to other websites.