THEY MIGHT NOT be the bookmakers’ favourite to win this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, but Jedward have been handed an unlikely boost ahead of next week’s contest in Düsseldorf: they’re just off the top of Google’s Eurovision Forecaster.

The search giant’s forecaster awards between 1 and 12 points to the Eurovision entrants topping the search trends in each participating country – and has aggregated the points totals to give Jedward second spot, only marginally behind last year’s German winner Lena.

The forecaster was launched on April 24, and within four days Jedward had stormed to the top of the search trends, as users from across the continent searched for more information on the Lucan 19-year-olds.

Jedward were only ousted by Lena – who is representing Germany again this year, after winning last year’s content in Oslo with ‘Satellite’ – this morning,

Though a high level of interest could be predicted from the likes of the UK, where the twins already enjoyed a significant profile after their appearance on The X Factor in 2009, the forecaster awards points in exactly the same way as the Eurovision itself is scored: with each country awarding a maximum of 12 points each, and barred from voting for itself.

Under today’s most recent revision of the stats, Lena is set to accrue 123 points – just two ahead of Jedward’s ‘Lipstick’ on 121. The Irish-German pairing are well ahead of the nearest challenger, Denmark’s entry ‘A Friend in London’, which is back on 98 points.

Although the public televote only accounts for half of a country’s votes in the real Eurovision, the Google forecaster has correctly predicted the winner for each of the past two years – so the form is promising well for Jedward, who are ranked only tenth by bookmakers Paddy Power.

The bookmakers have instead installed French entry Amaury Vassili (whose entry ‘Sognu’ is sung entirely through Corsican) as the 11/4 favourite. The UK’s entry, boy band Blue – which, to be fair, is essentially an un-Googleable phrase – is at 6/1.

Estonia’s Getter Jaani – who is fourth in the Google list – is priced at third-favourite; her entry ‘Rockefeller Street’ is at 7/1.

Jedward are required to qualify as one of the ten top-ranked acts from their semi-final, and have been drawn as the final act to perform on the second semi-final next Thursday, May 12. The final takes place the following Saturday, May 14.