The queries people make at search engines demonstrate what is on the minds of the electorate, as the latest data from Hitwise indicated. Abortion, war, and illegal immigration were among the issues U.S. searchers looked for in queries for the twelve weeks leading up to September 16th.
According to the company’s research, the top political issue-related terms following abortion’ for the 12 weeks ending September 12, 2006 were military deaths in iraq’, antiwar’ and hezbollah’. Trailing these were ‘biodiesel’, ‘death penalty’, ‘american flag’, ‘illegal immigration’, ‘unemployment’, and ‘gun control’.
This contrasts with biodiesel’, death penalty’ and american flag’ for the 12 weeks ending September 17, 2005. For the 12 weeks ending September 18, 2004, the top political issue terms following abortion’ were american flag’, homeland security’ and gay marriage’.
The top search term overall for the Lifestyle – Politics category was ‘Huffington Post’ for the 12 weeks ending September 16. 2006. For the same period in 2005 the top term was Michael Moore’ and in 2004 it was John Kerry’.
“Consumer Internet behavior provides great insight into the American public’s prioritization of political concerns,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.
“For example, the change in search terms resulting in traffic to the 841 sites that we monitor in our Lifestyle – Politics category is a great proxy for top-of-mind issues as we get close to November’s mid-term elections.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
