Black Actresses ranked by Google

There was a great post in Rocka Candy ranking Hollywood’s Black Leading Ladies using web metrics. The site did an exhaustive search of popular black actresses, and rated them in A-D listed categories determined by the look of their official web destinations and the number of fan sites dedicated to them. Rocka Candy’s approach was a great idea, but it forgot to take into consideration one key component when determining a celebrity’s popularity. Search terms! What better measure of popularity than the number of people searching for you in Google!? We decided to take Rocka Candy’s study a step further by using Google Trends to measure each actress’s search popularity. Let’s see if our results jive with theirs.

We entered the each actress named in the Rocka Candy article into Google Trends. We took the results and ordered each by the highest search terms returned. We then divided the top five into categories ranking them into A-D lists. Here are our findings in order from highest to lowest:

A-List:

Halle Berry, Jennifer Hudson, Vivica Fox, Queen Latifah, Gabrielle Union

B-List

Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington, Lauren London, Jada Pinkett Smith, Nia Long

C-List

Megan Good, Sanaa Lathan, Keke Palmer, Zoe Saldana, Paula Patton

D-List

Angela Bassett, Regina King, Kimberly Elise, Tracee Ellis Ross, Mo’Nique

Using Google search terms alone is not flawless method. Google Trends does not take into consideration incorrect spelling which was probably the cause of the very low number of search terms returned for Tracee Ellis Ross and Mo’Nique.

Rocka Candy’s Findings:

A-List:

Halle Berry, Jennifer Hudson, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington, Zoe Saldana

B-List

Vivica Fox, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tracee Keke Palmer, Ellis Ross

C-List

Gabrielle Union, Lauren London, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Regina King

D-List

Nia Long, Megan Good, Sanaa Lathan, Angela Bassett, Kimberly Elise

What do you think?