Search engines have reported a massive spike in political-themed searches beginning late Wednesday when Julia Gillard requested a leadership ballot from then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.
Statistics from both Yahoo! and Google showed Australians were following the happenings in Canberra every step of the way.
Yahoo recorded a 6829.44 per cent rise on the search term ‘Julia Gillard,’ a huge 8164.49 per cent increase on the term ‘Julia Gillard biography’ and a 2600 per cent increase on ‘Julia Gillard pics,’ recorded from Wednesday 23 June until Friday 25 June.
Additional search terms on the rise at Yahoo! included, ‘Australian Labor Party’ (2597.72 per cent), ‘Tony Abbott’ (3107.65 per cent), ‘Kevin Rudd’ (3106.67 per cent), ‘Kevin Rudd biography’ (2042.72 per cent) and ‘Julia Gillard MP’ (1334.60 per cent).
Google too experienced the political search spike with its fastest rising search term being ‘Australian Labor Party,’ followed by ‘Rudd speech, Tim Mathieson (Gillard’s partner), Alistair Jordan (Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff), Kirribilli House, Quentin Bryce, Craig Emerson (small business minister) and Kevin Rudd speech.’
Google also noted the Australian people are trying to get to know their first female Prime Minister, with a number of search terms related to Gillard, including, ‘wikipedia Julia Gillard, Julia Gillard partner, is Julia Gillard married, Julia Gillard boyfriend, how old is Julia Gillard, where was Julia Gillard born, and Julia Gillard background.
Luckily for Gillard, a quick-thinking Sydney advertising designer jumped on the domain name juliagillardpm.com.au immediately, saving her from potential parody.
Despite the sudden shift in Federal leadership, the Government has produced a strong note of optimism within Australia's ICT industry.