Casey Abrams, Stefano Langone Spark Minimal “American Idol” Buzz?

One contestant, whose ability to contend with some of the heavy-hitters had previously been called into question, delivered a show-stopping, vocally-glorious rendition of the difficult “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.”

Another “Idol” contestant, a previous favorite, delivered one of the weirdest performances in the show’s history with the Nirvana classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Yet neither Stefano Langone nor Casey Abrams (nor any “Idol” finalist, in fact) generated the online buzz witnessed in the prior two weeks of “American Idol” competition.

Between 11PM and 12AM on performance nights, the night’s best-reviewed or most surprising performances had trickled into the Google Trends top twenty. Pia Toscano’s Top 13 performance, for instance, resulted in “All By Myself” becoming the most-searched term on Google.

Nothing like that happened this week. Critically-acclaimed performances from Langone, Pia Toscano and Jacob Lusk failed to track. The always-popular Scotty McCreery is similarly absent from the list, as is Casey Abrams, whose bizarre take on the Nirvana song ideally made waves.

While it was expected that buzz for specific performances would die down as the season went on, one has to wonder if Google might have pulled the trending on “Idol” topics to prevent “spoiling” results (similar to how iTunes does not reveal single sales). This would be a change of pace from Google and it would have come with no announcement whatsoever, but with searches related to ABC’s poorly-rated “Off the Map” gaining more visibility, one has to question the lack of Wednesday buzz for what has been an otherwise-very buzzworthy group of “American Idol” contestants.