It's politics and the economy: Google search results

According to Google's Zeitgeist lists, the Democratic Alliance (DA) received the highest volume of online searches for a political party, followed by African National Congress (ANC), Congress of the People (COPE) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Notably, although COPE was not a search term with high volume, it was, however, one of the fastest gaining queries over the quarter.

Malema tops

It comes as no surprise that Julius Malema - featured this quarter as SA's most searched for politician - is considered as interesting a figure online as he is offline, Malema is followed closely by Helen Suzman, whose recent death created a spike not only in South African queries, but globally, once again confirming that what happens offline is rapidly reflected online. Close on the heels of the Suzman searches came Helen Zille, Trevor Manuel, Kgalema Motlanthle and Jacob Zuma, in that order. Popular search topics also included voting registration, stations, dates and how to vote, as the public prepare themselves to vote for South Africa's next government.

Looking at international politics, interest in our troubled neighbour Zimbabwe has not waned, and Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai sit among the top-10 political figures most searched for by South Africans. Other popular political queries included Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Gaza, as well as “Bushism”, “An Inconvenient Truth” and the “White House”, amongst others.

The global economy

Meanwhile, the global economic situation is still at the forefront of peoples' minds, with terms like “inflation” and “exchange rates” proving to be popular, and South Africa ranking seventh in the list of countries searching most for the “downturn”. People also appear to be researching how to make the most of their savings and how other markets are performing during the financial crisis. To this extent South Africans' queries mirror global findings, which show that the term “managing downturn” has seen a 90% increase in 2009.

"Our Zeitgeist data shows trends and developments around political and economic searches that we gathered using Google Trends and Google Insights for Search," says Zeitgeist spokesperson Kasia Chmielinski. "These are freely available public tools, which help people to follow current changing dynamics in measurable ways. Search is like a barometer that can help both the public and businesses stay in touch with latest trends. In the case of South Africa, it's clear that offline patterns and events, such as the forthcoming elections, drive online search."

Anyone can use Insights for search by visiting google.com/insights/search and Trends www.google.com/trends

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