A successful week is when you win HoH/vote correctly.
An unsuccessful week is when you're one of the final nominees/you vote incorrectly. (Or, in the case of this season, you get expelled.)
Often times, those who have good success rates do very well in the game. I've been doing this for a little bit, and typically, the eventual winner of the season has a very good success rate. Obviously this statistic has a lot of flaws, but it's interesting to see who has been in the most control over the entire course of the season.