The hottest Google searches involving New Brunswick in the last year

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Blaine Higgs was Google searched the most this past year during a week in June.

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The number of searches for his name that week were the second-highest he’s ever received in his entire political career.

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Only the week Higgs secured his first majority government in September 2020 was there more interest in his name, according to the Silicon Valley-based technology company’s search engine trending data.

Higgs’s “peak popularity,” as Google calls it, came as he faced a revolt from eight members of his caucus over changes made to the province’s policy on sexual orientation in schools.

It’s just after he started flirting with the idea of calling an election on the issue.

Google has released the top trending search terms, questions and moments Canadians were most interested in this year.

But it also provides trending data on all popular search terms, showing insight into when key New Brunswick issues and personalities made it onto the radar of both New Brunswickers and others across Canada.

That includes what countries around the world are searching for New Brunswick.

Blaine Higgs

Higgs had more Google searches every week in June than at any point in the year.

There was a small spike in searches for his name during the second week in February, coinciding with his annual state of the province speech, a place he had teased an announcement on his future leading the Progressive Conservatives could be made.

It wasn’t.

Instead, the only other significant spike in Google searches for Higgs came during a week in September when he formally announced he would lead the Tories into the next election.

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What pushed Higgs to new search heights in June was an unusual swell of searches from elsewhere in the country.

Higgs drew considerable interest from Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, but also from people Googling in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta.

To a lesser extent, he also saw an increase in searches from Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec.

Typically, he receives little Google interest from anyone outside Atlantic Canada.

Interest across the country was in lockstep with searches for Policy 713, New Brunswick’s rules on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.

The most searches for Policy 713 from outside New Brunswick came from Nova Scotia.

Meanwhile, residents from Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec searched it enough to see it register as a popular search term.

New Brunswick

The province itself was searched most during a three-week period in late July and early August.

Searches also spiked again in mid-September.

While not exactly clear what gave way to the uptick, Google’s data suggests that “related topics” were Alcool NB Liquor, Service New Brunswick and NB Power.

“NB Day 2023” also factored prominently.

Hurricane Lee is ranked as a “breakout” trend among New Brunswick Google searches, while searches for NB Health Link, the new program aimed at providing access to health care for New Brunswickers who don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, also spiked.

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There were large increases in searches for obituaries, power outages, fire bans, Casino New Brunswick and Cannabis NB, among others.

Searches for New Brunswick weather also registered in Google’s trends.

Meanwhile, outside of Canada, New Brunswick was searched most by people living in Cameroon, followed by Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. That was followed by Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Morocco, Pakistan, Algeria, Qatar, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Nepal.

Nearly all of the related queries for New Brunswick internationally were for a variation of the New Brunswick Critical Worker Pilot.

The program is ranked as a “breakout” search over the last year.

New Brunswick announced in November 2022 that it was launching a new immigration stream aimed at attracting skilled workers for occupations that were hard to fill.

Six of the province’s employers were chosen to participate in the pilot program: Cooke Aquaculture, Groupe Savoie Inc., Groupe Westco, Imperial Manufacturing, J.D. Irving, Limited, and McCain Foods.

Most of those companies also saw a similar spike in Google searches over the last year.

The immigration path is more flexible, allowing employers to provide skills and language training, rather than seeing newcomers have a prerequisite skill set.

Other politicians

According to Google’s trends data, Liberal Leader Susan Holt registered as a trending topic several times in the past year, with her largest search traffic coming during a week in April.

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That’s as she captured a seat in the provincial legislature with a byelection win in the province’s northeast.

But she had a few other smaller jumps in searches.

Holt’s May swearing-in ceremony to officially become the MLA for Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore, her September announcement that she will next seek election in the newly-created riding of Fredericton South-Silverwood, and a late November and early December spike coinciding with sitting days inside the legislature all saw search increases.

That’s as the searches for her name came almost exclusively from within New Brunswick over the course of the year.

Searches for Holt only registered in Ontario in Google’s trending data, to the smallest degree, and nowhere else in the country.

The data was similar for Green Leader David Coon, who registered little outside of New Brunswick. Coon saw his greatest search traffic during a week in February.

Few New Brunswick politicians register as a trending topic outside the province.

That said, Fredericton West-Hanwell MLA Dominic Cardy saw search traffic in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec as he launched a new political party aiming to offer a centrist approach to federal politics.

Federal Liberal Cabinet Minister Dominic LeBlanc sees trending searches from all provinces, while cabinet colleague Ginette Petitpas Taylor saw her name trending at points in the last year in all provinces except Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Petitpas Taylor was actually most searched in Prince Edward Island in 2023 after taking over the Veteran Affairs file headquartered in that province.

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