What Google reveals about the current state of play in Eastleigh
The search results thrown up by Google often provide a neat little insight into what angles of a story are dominating coverage and people’s attention. The angles that get the most prominent coverage and the most interaction and responses are the ones that rise to the top of the search results. So what do they tell us about the current state of play in the Eastleigh by-election?
Here’s what Google’s top ten search results for eastleigh by-election (with the verbatim option turned on*) contain at the time of writing:
- Maria Hutchings and John O’Farrell (Conservative and Labour candidates in Eastleigh) have made controversial comments
- Maria Hutchings has made controversial comments
- Mike Thornton (the Lib Dem candidate) is favourite to win whilst Maria Hutchings and John O’Farrell have made controversial comments
- Maria Hutchings has made controversial comments
- Wikipedia entry for previous by-election
- Wikipedia entry for current by-election
- Maria Hutchings has made controversial comments
- Maria Hutchings has made controversial comments
- Maria Hutchings has made controversial comments
- One of my round-up blog posts on the by-election**
That makes for 7/10 entries being primarily or partly about controversial comments from Maria Hutchings.
I think we can file that in the ‘not going so well for the Conservatives’ pile.
* Google customises its search results based on where it thinks you are, who it thinks you are and what it thinks your track-record of searches are. This can be useful to figure out if your search for “golf” means the sport or the car. It also means different people can see very different search results. The verbatim option strips out all the customisation and shows you what the ‘underlying’ search results are before any personalisation is added to them.
** All my Eastleigh by-election round-up posts are available here, whilst don’t forget also Stephen Tall’s posts regularly reporting on the Eastleigh by-election which are here.
Interesting post, Mark. But I wonder if the old adage 'all publicity is good publicity' might come into play here.. Take a look at: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22Maria%20Hutchings%22%2C%20%22John%20O%E2%80%99Farrell%22%2C%20%22mike%20thornton%22&geo=GB&date=today%201-m&cmpt=q.
At least Maria is getting name recognition! 🙂
She's certainly putting the idea that volume of coverage can outweigh quality of coverage to the test!