With general elections in the country less than a month away, search engine Google has launched a dedicated page for election search trends in Pakistan.
The page shows key terms being serached about the Pakistan election on google and also allows them to be filtered by city or region.
In addition, the page has also picked out major political parties and shown which of them is the subject of most search queries. It has also revealed what people are trying to know about the elections.
The election search trends page also allows its data to be embedded across websites.
While the data is live and will be updated whenever it is embedded after a change in the original trends page, the feature does not allow users to toggle the duration for which data is being displayed.
The data regarding most searched political parties has been made available as a proportion of 100% to allow users to see their relative popularity. The data is currently available for 14 days.
Additionally, the page also shows what questions have been searched the most about the upcoming general elections over the last three months.
According to the current data, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is the subject of most searches regarding the elections with 77%. It is followed by Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz at 14%, Pakistan Peoples Party at 3% and Tehreek-e-Labbaik at 2%.
Some parties including the Balochsitan Awami Party and PMLQ have been serached for so infrequently that they are calssified at 0%.
Moreoever, clicking the name of any party will show you multiple data points including interest in the topic over time. It also shows which region’s users are searching for the party compared to others.
According to data on the page, ‘What is the date of elections in Pakistan?’ was the most searched query on the subject. Second on the list is the question, ‘Will caretaker ministers be changed?’ Such data is currently defined for the last three months.
Another feature added to the trends page is interest in economic topics in searches from Pakistan, which spiked in the last 12 months according to Google. The most searched query was ‘What is inflation?’
The feature is part of the Google News Initiative that makes online search tools accessible to promote better journalism in digital spaces. It is also aimed at fighting misinformation.
However, it is important to note that the data displayed on the page are simply search trends and search interest about a particular event or party cannot simply be considered an indication of public support.
