Searching for Palin's 'Hot Photos'

Bill Tancer
Time

I doubt that any of us have ever considered any of our past vice-presidential candidates a sex symbol. But if recent Internet searches are any measure of the average American's current interest in politics, that may be changing.

On the Richter scale of Internet search energy, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's announcement on Friday that he had chosen Sarah Palin, the current governor of Alaska, as his running mate measured a magnitude 10. If you compare the number of searches for "John McCain," "Barack Obama" or "Joe Biden" with those for "Sarah Palin," there's no contest. In just two days, the number of U.S. Internet searches for "Sarah Palin" reached a peak greater than any other political personality in the past three years. In the week ending Aug. 30, 2008, searches for Governor Palin were almost four times as popular as Obama searches, eight times as popular as McCain searches and over 10 times more popular than searches for Biden.

So, what exactly are Palin searchers seeking?

Of the 1,323 unique search queries containing "Sarah Palin" over the past four weeks, there were many that you'd normally expect to see regarding a newly named vice-presidential candidate: queries about Palin's biography, for example, her voting record and her stance on abortion.

The No. 1 search was simply "Sarah Palin." The next nine most popular search terms that appeared in conjunction with "Sarah Palin" were:

2. Vogue Magazine
3. Photos
4. Beauty Pageant
5. Bio
6. Biography
7. Pictures
8. Scandal
9. Alaska Governor
10. Hot

(Full story here.)