We're a month away from the Iowa Caucuses, and all the talk is about Obama overtaking Hillary on the Democratic side, Huckabee's surge among Iowa Republicans...and yet, can you name the most-Googled candidate in the entire field?
Why is this man smiling?
If you guessed Mike Gravel, you're absolutely wrong.
The answer: Ron Paul.
Paul has been a hot commodity on the Internet, and that's reflected on trends.google.com, which tracks Google's most popular searches. This morning, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of Search and User Experience, talked about some of the site's top searches and most interesting results. WATCH VIDEO
It's actually kind of fun to go to trends.google.com and throw in some terms to see what gets more Internet traction. For example, I tossed in "Bruce Springsteen," "Bob Dylan," and "Bono."
For most of the year, Dylan had the most searches, followed by Bono and then Springsteen. But around August, Bruce started to take off in advance of the release of his new album and the start of his tour.
Recently, though, with the release of the new Dylan bio-pic, I'm Not There, Bob's being seached more now than at any other point this year. Meanwhile, in a year in which U2 has had no new album or tour, Bono has been pretty consistently searched.
Of course, I don't really know anything about anything -- I'm just guessing as to what's happening with these trends.
But that's the beauty of checking out this site: you can throw in a bunch of terms and try to figure out for yourself what's behind the numbers.
And it's also handy if you need a procrastination tool at work. So give it a look and let us know if you find any interesting trends.
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