Olga Kurylenko Case Study: Why Celebrities Need an Active Web Presence
Celebrity Websites
As we’ve talked about many times on our blog, we like to get a feel for what people are talking about by chasing trends — mainly Google Search Trends and Twitter’s Trending Topics.
After a wonderful day at Universal Studios, we plopped down to see what people were searching for and chatting about.
One of three things happens when we sit down for this exercise and see a trending topic or search. We say,
- Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
- Why in the worlds is that trending?
- What is that even?
The first two are the most common responses. The second two reactions prompts deeper research. Today, we had two number 3s.
Olga Kurylenko
Kurylenko sat at number four. We noticed something very strange about her position.
Out of the search results that Google displayed, the most recent one was published on June 10 — more than a week ago.
Now that may seem pretty fresh, but usually when something or someone appears on Google’s trending searches, they have something published minutes or hours ago showing up in the results.
Furthermore, nothing in the results would suggest anything that would warrant her such a lofty placement.
So, we opened up the general search results page, and we quickly found out that she was an attractive female (thanks Google Images).
Other than that though, there was no official page for news and information, which we would expect from a celebrity.
Instead, we’re left with IMBD and Wikipedia at the top of the results.
Nothing in her filmography would suggest any reason that she’d be trending.
We’re getting frustrated.
So we turned to Wikipedia, which had this to say about her:
Olha Kostiantynivna Kurylenko (Ukrainian: Ольга Костянтинівна Куриленко, Russian: Ольга Константиновна Куриленко; born November 14, 1979), better known as Olga Kurylenko, is a Ukrainian actress and model. She is perhaps best known as the Bond girl, Camille Montes, in the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. She also portrayed Nika Boronina in the movie adaptation of the video game Hitman. She became a French citizen in 2001.
OK. So. Again, why is she trending? Because we’re intrepid seekers of the truth, we read through her entry and noticed that she does have an official page!
We eagerly click the link for http://www.olga-kurylenko.net/about/ and are sadly redirected to her BuddyTV Page, which has no useful information.
Ugh!
But we did pick up on something.
We noticed that she was in the movie “Hitman.” We realized we had seen that somewhere recently, and then we realized it was in the “related searches” area for her Google Trend.
Maybe that has something to do with it. But Hitman was released in 2007.
We must go deeper.
Turns out Hitman was a key links because the other related search on her trends page was “timothy olyphant.”
Timothy Olyphant
Turns out Olyphant shared the screen with our Ukrainian mystery woman in the movie Hitman, and in fact, he was trending 10 spaces down at #14.
Unfortunately, his trends page didn’t offer much more insight into why the duo were such a hot topic, either.
Looks like we have to go Realtime
Frustratingly, the majority of the realtime results were spam blogs that just jammed trends into posts to get listed high in Google.
But we found a diamond in the rough.
Listed in one of the tiny meta descriptions, we see:
Jun 19, 2011 … The Russian actress Olga Kurylenko will appear in a drama series title “Magic City”, the drama series set in 1950s Miami Beach. …
OK. OK. But that his nothing to do with Olyphant. We doubt that he would be trending because of a small announcement about one of his former co-stars.
So we search for “olga kurylenko hitman timothy olyphant.”
Nothing.
Let’s narrow our search to the last 24 hours.
Ah ha!!! Hitman looks like it aired on television today.
Now, we ask you, why should someone have to search that hard to find out why a celebrity is in the news?
Answer: They shouldn’t.
A web-savvy celebrity would have their Social Media arm all over that.
How about an official site with a three sentence blog post that they’ll be on TV today?
Too difficult?
How about a freaking Tweet?!
This is clearly a missed opportunity for Kurylenko and Olyphant to take advantage of some exposure to connect with fans and promote themselves.
Not to mention inform obsessive compulsives like ourselves.
About Cody Swann
Cody Swann is an entrepreneur, developer, strategist, banged up ex-football walk-on, retired body builder and former journalist born and raised in South Florida. He currently splits his time between his hometown of Stuart, FL and Los Angeles, CA. Cody founded Gunner Technology, a highly sought after digital agency, specializing in helping companies maximize profits through custom web development, technology efficiencies, social media strategy and search engine marketing.
As a manager and developer at ESPN for nearly six years, Cody led development and vision for two of ESPN’s most popular online features: Sports Scoreboards and GameCasts. Additionally Cody oversaw all aspects of MyESPN and ESPN’s social network, ESPN Fan Profiles. Cody worked with Technology, Editorial, Sales, Marketing and relevant business stakeholders to mold ESPN’s social media strategy, develop custom applications for it and execute it. Under his direction, ESPN successfully ported large portions of its core product from a proprietary Java stack to an open source Ruby on Rails stack, capable of standing up and performing under the tremendous load world's most popular sports site delivers.
Cody began forging his technological knowledge more than 10 years ago, developing and designing websites in college. His development work has included web development, web design, content writing, digital photography and digital video production for award-winning sites like Gainesville.com, GatorSports.com and ESPN.com. He has helped set digital strategy and direction for companies in the New York Times Regional Newspaper group, ESPN, ABC and Disney.
He is a recognized expert in web development, social media strategy, search engine optimization, conversion optimization, analytics tracking and business planning. He has worked with large interactive media companies to small and medium sized businesses. Cody motivates and inspires creative teams to deliver superb, polished work under tight deadlines.