Economic Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali and his former aide Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz are the only politicians to feature in this year’s Google Year in Search report for Malaysia.

Azmin (photo) appeared second in the list, while Haziq ranked ninth.

The rest of the list is populated by various TV personalities such as actress Vanessa Angle, who topped the list, and actor Ben Amir.

The list is compiled by Google annually based on search terms that garnered the highest spike in interest throughout the year.

This was in contrast to last year when the 14th general election took place and the list was populated by politicians and other politically-connected personalities.

Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak, who is now facing criminal action over the 1MDB scandal, had topped the list of personalities last year.

There were no politicians on the list in 2016 and 2017.

In June, a video featuring two men engaging in sexual activities was circulated.

Haziq, who was the Santubong PKR Youth chief, confessed to being one of the men involved and claimed Azmin was the other person in the video.

Azmin has denied the allegation.

This year also saw escalating infighting between PKR, Azmin and Co, and that of PKR president Anwar Ibrahim.

Nevertheless, data on Google Trends showed the infighting did not increase search interest in Azmin nor Haziq significantly, compared to when the sex scandal first broke.

Meanwhile, when it comes to news, many Malaysians seem to have turned to Google to look for information on air quality.

The search term “Air Pollutant Index” topped the list with many searches conducted in September when haze caused by forest fires in Indonesia blanketed much of Malaysia.

This is followed by Tanjung Piai, where a by-election was held on Nov 16 and resulted in a disastrous defeat for Pakatan Harapan.

Other news that piqued Malaysian’s interests include the Budget 2020, petrol prices, the Hong Kong protests, and Pasir Gudang.

Pasir Gudang had been the site of illegal chemical dumps in Sungai Kim Kim that forced nearby schools to close.