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.
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: