Donald Trump may have been a no-show at Thursday night's Republican presidential debate in Iowa, but the GOP front-runner handily won the social media game.
Trump trounced the other top contenders — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Jeb Bush — in terms of Google search rankings and a net gain in Twitter followers.
<div class="ftb-widget" data-width="584" data-height="457" data-widget-id="kHKh5as8Pm5" data-href="http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com" ><a href="http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com" target="_blank" style="font:14px/16px arial;color:#3d3d3d;">Google Trends During the Seventh Republican Debate | InsideGov</a></div><script async src="https://s.graphiq.com/rx/widgets.js"></script>'
As the debate kicked off at 9 p.m. ET, Trump soared on Google's ranking.
Trump also nabbed more than 10,750 new followers during the seventh Republican showdown:
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com