In recent weeks the debate over immigration has intensified as the Senate considers a bill that could fundamentally change US immigration policy. Searches on ‘immigration’ have increased by 69% in the last week (week ending 4/1/06 vs. week ending 3/25/06), and further analysis of these searches proves revealing:
The leading site typically receiving traffic from ‘immigration’ is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the first organic Google result. By charting the share of ‘immigration’ searches that sent visits to sites in the Hitwise Government category, we see a good deal of volatility and only a 45% increase in the most recent week.

The chart showing the share of ‘immigration’ searches sending visits to News & Media sites shows a different picture – a 96% increase in the past week, well above any activity during the past year.

Search term analysis shows that Google News, Yahoo! News, and NPR.org each received more than 4% of the traffic from ‘immigration’ searches for the four weeks ending 4/1/06. Just five weeks ago, no news site ranked in the top five sites receiving traffic from ‘immigration.’ The combination of charting search terms to a category or website and search term analysis can be a powerful tool to gauge the intent of Internet searchers.