What follows is a comparison of Google’s search volume from U.S. addresses for the phrases “Game of Thrones” (blue) and “Boardwalk Empire” (red), their two new shows. Boardwalk Empire has an amazing pedigree, with Martin Scorsese as producer and director of its pilot, and a host of well-regarded actors, as well as rumored buckets of production money unlike any pilot every filmed. And yet . . .
The 1 month timeline is screwy, but it does let us see the relative spike in search traffic volume for Game of Thrones when the teaser and sub-site premiered as compared to Boardwalk Empire‘s more modest spike in activity after their promo and newest trailer release. It looks like GoT had three times the search volume following the teaser, a huge gain presaged by the report that the first novel ended up on Amazon.com’s Movers & Shaker list for awhile.
Of course, we’ve been getting more about Boardwalk Empire for longer, but it’s interesting to see on the “max” scale that the show has only on a couple of occasions spiked above the volume for the Game of Thrones phrase. Some significant portion of that volume (especially back before 2008) is due to the novels, of course, but the huge spikes of late—and the upward trend seen in the “max” scale—are definitely in large part due to the series. This show has more pre-production buzz than any show HBO’s ever aired before, near as we can tell—probably a motivator for such an early unveiling of the sub-site (have we said thanks for that, yet? Thanks, HBO!)—and if we look how True Blood trended, it’s possible that the series could bring down the internet if it pushes the right buttons for HBO viewers.