In this year’s Digital Marketer report, to be released in March, we have an interesting section on politics and PoliticalPersonasSM from Experian Simmons. Before the release, and with the republican primaries heating up, I figured it would be a great time to check the search terms driving traffic to the Lifestyle – Politics category within Experian Hitwise. For the four weeks ending February 11, 2012, we captured 21,409 unique search terms.
The first 111 search terms in the Lifestyle – Politics category focus on Republican candidates’ names, their wives’ names and navigational searches on political blogs. One of the most striking observations we’ve made about this year’s primary as well as previous primaries, is that searches revolving around political issues don’t show up on the list until the 112th search term.
We decided to take a closer look at just those terms that relate to political issues. The interesting observation is that while most of the primary debates have featured the economy as a main issue, there are no economic issue terms in the top ten issues searched. So what political issues are people are searching on? Here is the list of the top ten political issues searched for the last four weeks.
Political Search Terms: Top Issues Searched
(4 weeks ending 2/11/2012)
- Israel and Iran
- healthcare
- abortion
- gun control
- global warming
- European crisis
- human rights
- taxes
- death penalty
- Iran nuclear
Be sure to pre-order the 2012 Digital Marketer report here to receive your copy as soon as it is released.