Google’s teaming up with Fox News for the upcoming Republican debate — which is the final one before the primaries — on Jan. 28. Basically, Google will be providing a number of different vectors for folks to learn about the candidates beyond what they might be used to seeing in a given debate.
According to Google’s blog on the collaboration, search interest jumps 440 percent during televised debates. In an effort to tap into this by (hopefully) providing more detailed responses to specific questions, the various Republican campaigns will be able to post a variety of responses, including text, photos and videos during the debate that will show up directly in Google Search results as soon as the debate starts at 7 p.m. EST.
So, for example, if someone wanted to better understand something Ted Cruz says and hits up Google, Cruz’s campaign might have posted a better, more detailed response. On the other hand, it could also serve as something of a crutch where the candidates merely verbally slap each other and expect folks to go do the digging for themselves to actually figure out where everyone stands on issues. Hard to say before actually seeing it in action, though Google’s promotional image of what this might look like seems to indicate that it’ll mostly be expanded versions of what they’re already going to be stating.
They’ll also be using data from Google Trends to offer up search-related insights like trending terms and questions about various issues during the debate. There will also be polls found in Google Search for folks that are searching “Fox News debate” — whose results could then be covered live by Fox. What exactly they might try and glean from these polls isn’t exactly clear, but let’s hope that they provide options and don’t allow users to enter in their own answers.
As with many collaborations like this with Google, a couple of YouTubers will be able to pose a question to the candidates. Specifically, Nabela Noor, Mark Watson and Dulce Candy will each look to ask something about “an issue that matters to them and their communities.” One imagines that those questions will have been carefully-vetted, but it might still make for a memorable moment of television.
Source: Google
