ISLAMABAD: As the General Elections are just three weeks away, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has emerged as the top-searched political party for information online over the past 14 days, according to the data released by Google.

The data highlights that searching about political parties and other related topics to help navigate the electoral process is gaining popularity.

The top search with 78 per cent is for the PTI, followed by the PML-N with 14 per cent searches, whereas the searches for the PPP were only three per cent, the TLP with two per cent, and the searches for the MQM-Pakistan were one per cent in the last 14 days.

The data has been streamlined by the search engine Google to help media and the general public get easy access to the details of public interests related to elections.

The “Google Trends Pakistan General Election page” is a tool that exhibits the top search queries, topics, and interests of parties contesting the elections.

The page includes data on the top election-related topics searched in each part of the country, such as the economy, taxes, and wages, among others.

Google has said that all the charts from the ‘Google Trends page’ are embeddable on any site and will continue to update even after they’re placed on an outlet’s site.

At the same time, the search engine clarified that the Google Trends Pakistan General Election page was not a poll or survey and does not reflect voting intentions.

“It merely reflects people’s search interest about particular topics at a local level over a period of time,” Google has said, adding that the spike in a particular search query does not reflect that a political party is somehow “more popular” or “winning.”

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2024