The third and final U.S. presidential debate went over “bigly” on social media, sending users into a frenzy over nasty women, bad hombres and Donald Trump-inspired book reports.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sparked the most search engine activity during the debate, with his use of the word "bigly" (yes, it's a word), and his stance on the war in Iraq. Google Trends tweeted that 70 per cent of the debate-driven traffic on its search engine was related to Trump, while 30 per cent was related to Hillary Clinton.

Abortion, immigration and guns were among the top five most-searched issues during the debate. Many also looked up WikiLeaks in connection with Clinton, and "women" in association with Trump.

Trump inspired one of the most divisive hashtags after he interrupted Clinton to call her a "nasty woman." Trump supporters embraced the term as another way to attack Clinton.

Clinton backers tried to turn the hashtag around by embracing it as a backhanded compliment.

Others laughed at Trump's use of the term "bad hombres" to refer to Mexicans in the U.S.

A few users poked fun at the term by creating the hashtag #BadOmbres – a reference to hair colour that is generally darker at the roots and then gradually lighter toward the ends.

St. Louis politician Antonio French spawned perhaps the most enduring hashtag of the night, by comparing Trump's answers on foreign policy to "a book report from a teenager who hasn't read the book. 'Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!" His joking tweet received more than 7,000 retweets, and spawned a flood of #TrumpBookReports on famous works of fiction, written in Trump's manner of speaking, or referring to some of his past verbal miscues.