The media’s interest in the SNC-Lavalin affair has been matched by mounting public intrigue, according to major upticks in searches of its key characters on a popular search engine, but where exactly the focus has landed depends on from where in Canada users are searching.

Since the SNC-Lavalin affair (if you’ve missed its arc to date due to a more than month-long media detox, you can read about the most recent developments here, here, here and here) was prompted by a Feb. 7 story in the Globe and Mail, Google search interest in Canada for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has regularly surpassed online interest before the story broke, with search popularity at times soaring to multiples of pre-affair queries.

Google search interest in SNC-Lavalin has also regularly been around twice as popular as pre Feb. 7 interest. Interest in Jody Wilson-Raybould has also soared compared to before the scandal broke, when she was hardly searched for frequently enough to be accounted for in Google’s data collection.

Note: Google Trends shows search interest relative to the highest interest level possible for a region at a certain time. Google does not disclose the total number of searches made. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for a term in a certain time in the selected region; 50 means the term is half as popular; 25 means the term is a one-fourth as popular as a term valued 100, and so forth. A value of 0 means that the term was not searched enough to be registered.

Since Feb. 7, Trudeau has regularly been the most searched topic of those who have been central to the controversy, in Canada. For the purpose of this article, iPolitics considered Trudeau, SNC-Lavalin, Wilson-Raybould and Gerald Butts, the prime minister’s former right-hand man, as the affair’s main figures. The popularity of searches for Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick and former cabinet minister Jane Philpott will also be explored below. Other officials who have been implicated in the controversy rarely generated enough searches to be considered measurable by Google Trends’ standards. Wernick, Philpott and others have been left off of charts below to provide clearer graphics.

The only days that users in Canada searched for SNC-Lavalin more than for Trudeau were from Feb. 11 to Feb. 13, on Feb. 22 and on Feb. 27.

On Feb. 11, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion announced that he was investigating if the prime minister had broken conflict of interest rules and Trudeau admitted that he and Wilson-Raybould had discussed SNC-Lavalin in the fall. Wilson-Raybould resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet on Feb. 12, when she was searched more often than Trudeau, but was slightly less popular than SNC-Lavalin. On Feb. 13, the House Justice committee debated how it would investigate the controversy. Wernick made the first of his two appearances in front of the justice committee on Feb. 21, on which he was searched a similar amount of times as Butts. The next day, Wernick was searched about three times as much as Butts, but slightly less than Wilson-Raybould.

Wilson-Raybould testified at the justice committee on Feb. 27, which is the only day that she was searched for the most of the affair’s central figures. Wilson-Raybould, Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin had their most dramatic peaks in search interest the day after the former attorney general’s committee appearance.

Butts matched SNC-Lavalin in search frequencies on Feb. 18, the day he resigned from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and was searched second most of the major players on Mar. 6, the day that he testified in front of the justice committee. He has never been the most searched person involved in the scandal. Wernick was searched almost half as often as Wilson-Raybould on Mar. 6, which was when he appeared in front of committee for the second time. Butts was searched about 10 times as frequently as Wernick was that day, when they both appeared in front of the committee.

When she resigned as the President of the Treasury Board on Mar. 4, Philpott was searched three times as frequently as Wilson-Raybould, slightly more than SNC-Lavalin and just over half as frequently as Trudeau. Trudeau was searched about three times as frequently as Philpott the next day, while SNC-Lavalin overtook her in searches and Wilson-Raybould was searched about one-third as many times as her.

Of all the provinces and territories, Quebec was the only region where SNC-Lavalin – or any of the controversy’s central figures – were searched for more than Trudeau, since Feb. 7. The Montreal-based construction and engineering company accounted for 42 per cent of scandal-related searches in the province. It was searched least frequently in the Yukon, where it was looked up in only 16 per cent of searches of the affair’s four key figures, and in Saskatchewan (out of just the provinces), where it only accounted for 26 per cent of relevant queries.

In comparison to each other, Trudeau was searched in the highest proportion in the territory of Nunavut (76 per cent) and the province of Manitoba (55 per cent); Wilson-Raybould had her highest proportion as a search term in her home province on British Columbia (24 per cent) and the territory of Yukon (19 per cent); and Butts was searched at the highest rate in the Northwest Territories (21 per cent) and the province of Nova Scotia (seven per cent).

Looking to Canada’s major cities, SNC-Lavalin accounted for the largest proportion of searches in Montreal, where it was looked up in 39 per cent of searches, just short of Trudeau, who was accounted for 41 per cent of queries of our key search terms. Trudeau represents the Montreal riding of Papineau.

Butts accounted for a higher proportion of searches in Ottawa (nine per cent) than anywhere else, compared to Trudeau, SNC-Lavalin and Wilson-Raybould. Wilson-Raybould was searched for in the highest proportion in Vancouver, the location of her Vancouver Granville riding. She was the search term in 28 per cent of Vancouver searches, which matched SNC-Lavalin’s frequency. Trudeau dominated searches in Calgary (53 per cent), Edmonton (51 per cent) and Winnipeg (49 per cent) at the highest clip.

Follow @CharliePinkerto