Political Interests Tracked

Google tracks our political interests
By Mark Schliebs
September 28, 2007 07:55am

A VARIATION of TV's famous election 'Worm' could be used to determine which party Australian voters were more interested in, following the release of Google Trends locally.

Metering the internet search terms used by Australians, Google’s new tool can compare voters searching habits.

“Liberal” is currently more searched for than “Labor”, except in the ACT. According to the tool, Australians were also more interested in finding information on health care and the economy than they were in learning about climate change and interest rates. While the number of Australians using the search engine to find information on many key election issues has fluctuated throughout 2007, health care was the most consistently searched for term.

But people in the Northern Territory, the ACT and Tasmania are searching more for climate change than any other election issue. According to the data generated by Google Trends, Australians are currently Googling “economy” more than health care, despite the two issues jostling for position as most popular domestic issues to search for.

Interest rates sporadically rise to the hottest searched for subject, peaking in the middle of speculation that the Reserve Bank may raise them. NSW has been the only state where industrial relations was the most searched for issue on Google.

In Western Australia, the most commonly searched for election issue was the economy. Google Australia’s Head of Engineering Alan Noble recently said the internet was an increasingly powerful tool for politicians and voters alike.

“(Our election tools) enable Australian voters to research detailed political information and share their views whenever they want,” Mr Noble said.

According to the company’s website, Google Trends is updated daily, even though it’s still in its early stages of development.

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