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By 13:00 on election day, Wednesday May 8, more than 200 000 people in South Africa had already turned to Google to find out more about the SA elections.
On Wednesday the Google Doodle commemorated South Africa's 6th democratic elections.
Search trends information data collated by Google based showed that the second most election related search by that time on Wednesday was the more than 10 000 searches by people wanting to find their nearest voting station. This was followed by the more than 5 000 searches each for topics such as EFF, (Mmusi) Maimane and "voting".
Google processes more than 40 000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
Earlier on Wednesday morning, by about 09:00, the Top-5 election related trends showed that more than 100 000 people had searched for election-related topics.
In second position at that time was the more than 5 000 people wanting to know where the closest voting station to them was, followed by searches of whether voters could vote anywhere, more searches for Maimane as well as the ACDP.
Fin24 reported earlier that "who to vote for" was one of the top election-related questions South Africans asked on Google in the week leading up to Wednesday's general election.
According to Google research, the question asked most was whether election day was a public holiday. In the second spot was the actual date of the elections.
The third most frequently asked election-related question at the time was where to go and vote, followed by who to vote for.
