Every Tuesday morning the amount of swearing on social media sites Australia-wide spikes to its highest level, while at 3pm everyday in Melbourne people talk about their dogs online.

This is the type of information Professor Xue Li gathers and analyses with his opinion search engine developed by his University of Queensland team, a tool which predicted with 96 per cent accuracy the unexpected outcome of January's Queensland state election. The result of that election won by the Labor government was a surprise to most.