Donald Trump skipped the Republican debate hosted by Fox News Thursday night in Des Moines, Iowa, but he still dominated online search and social media throughout practically the entire two-hour event.
Far more people performed Google searches for Trump during the debate than for any other candidate, according to data from the search engine, which co-sponsored the event, reported Reuters.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also performed fairly well on Google.
Trump also dominated his rivals on Twitter, where he was mentioned over 140,000 times during the debate and gained more new followers than any other candidate - about 10,750, according to social media monitoring company Brandwatch.
In all, about 36 percent of all Twitter conversations were related to Trump. Cruz trailed in second with 16 percent, followed by Rubio at 13 percent.
When only accounting for the candidates on stage, Cruz was out front with 25 percent of the Twitter conversation. Rubio came next with 20 percent, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took 16 percent.
On Facebook, which only calculated data from candidates who appeared on stage, Cruz stole the show with 41 percent of the conversation. Rubio was next with 18 percent, followed by Paul at 15 percent, Carson at 10 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at eight percent, Bush at five percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at three percent.
But when The Hill asked Facebook what Trump's numbers looked like, a spokesperson said, "If [Trump] had participated and been included in the list, he would have ranked number one with twice as many people talking about him as Cruz."
Trump boycotted the debate after Fox News issued a sarcastic statement mocking him for attempting to have Megyn Kelly removed from the moderator team. While the debate was taking place, Trump was just miles away hosting a fundraiser for veterans at Drake University, where he ended up raising nearly $6 million, which included $1 million of his own money, reported The Daily Caller.
