The final Republican debate happens tomorrow before the 2016 primaries begin in Iowa, and Google is getting ready for it.
Some of the top contenders for the Republican nomination, namely Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Jim Gilmore will be appearing in the debate airing on Fox News.
But more importantly here is Google's role during the whole show, and how it might just steal it from right under Fox News themselves. According to the company's blog:
"Political search interest spikes 440 percent on average during live televised debates as people turn to the web to learn more about the candidates and their platforms."
As a result, the search giant is launching a set of what it calls "experimental features" for the upcoming 2016 U.S. presidential elections where each candidate will get his or her own coveted spot on the top of a Google search result for a candidate's name.
So, instead of a Wikipedia link or the candidate's homepage appearing at the top during a search, Google will display a special window of content that presidentiables can control themselves. This window is actually a carousel of eight cards that can display text, images, and even video.
Google says this allows users a direct channel to candidates, and at the same time, gives candidates a 24/7 channel to broadcast their thoughts on an issue, photos from a successful debate, or highlights from a powerful speech.
This carousel of content for each candidate will go live during Thursday's presidential debate (along with a slew of other experimental features like displaying real-time Google Trends data and a Q&A session with influential YouTube creators) when it airs live on Fox News.
Bringing political debates to YouTube is actually something that Google has done in the past since 2008. The aim is to bring in younger voices from different backgrounds that'll hopefully lead to a greater variety of interaction between candidates and voters. For this year's election, the company has three popular YouTubers — Nabela Noor (a beauty vlogger), Mark Watson (a tech vlogger), and Dulce Candy (a fashion vlogger) — to join in Fox News' moderators during the debate.
Fox News and many other major traditional media outlets are no longer the only platforms for candidates to reach out to voters, however. Google's foray into political coverage with these experimental search features is just one example.
As informative (and entertaining) as televised debates are between candidates, their Twitter activity may actually be a better measure of who they are and what they stand for. Donald Trump definitely knows how to rile up the Twitterverse, and for better or worse, it gets him plenty of attention.
Attention is the name of the game here as it's even propelled the celebrity real estate billionaire to the front of the line for the Grand Old Party's nomination. So if candidates can get featured on YouTube at the top of a search result where voters can actually interact with them, Fox News may just have a harder time keeping viewers eyeballs on the TV instead of on a smartphone or tablet.
