Among the top Google search trends in the UK as voters process the reality of a hung parliament is the question of what the DUP stand for.

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party have emerged as powerbrokers following Theresa May's failure to win a majority of seats in the general election.

The Prime Minister has announced her intention to form a minority government with support from the DUP's ten MPs.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party "will enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how we can help bring stability to our nation".

But what do the Democratic Unionists stand for and what are they expecting from this arrangement?

The party is the largest in the Northern Ireland assembly and the country's largest party at Westminster, claiming ten seats to nearest rival Sinn Fein's seven in the election.

This is the DUP's best Westminster result and has been praised as "truly historic" by its leader.

The party has traditionally been linked to Protestantism and hardline unionism but its stance has evolved in more recent years.

As the conflict in Northern Ireland came to an end and the Good Friday power-sharing agreement was reached with old enemies Sinn Fein in the 1990s, the DUP became a party of government in the Northern Irish executive.

That power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein under DUP leaders Ian Paisley and then Peter Robinson endured until current leader Arlene Foster's tenure.

Relations between the parties broke down over the DUP's cash-for-ash controversy, in which people essentially made money from a scheme called the Renewable Heat Incentive by installing special wood pellet boilers.

The system was botched due to over-generous subsidies and no limit on usage, leading critics to characterise it as "the more you burn the more you earn".

A deadline for a deal to reinstate the executive after it fell apart in the wake of the scandal has been pushed out to the end of the month - with the alternative to an agreement being direct rule from Westminster.

Mike Nesbitt, former leader of the Ulster Unionists and one of the DUP's rivals, says Foster's party are now in an enviable position in the UK.

"It is what every local party in Northern Ireland hopes for - that they hold the balance of power and therefore have some degree of clout," he explained.

So where do the DUP stand on key issues?

The party is in favour of Brexit but crucially it is not in favour of a "hard Brexit", which limits free movement in such a way that it could lead to a land border with the Republic of Ireland.

It does not want to see a return of checkpoints and border enforcement after the Good Friday agreement put in place an open border between Northern Ireland and its southern neighbour.

It is anticipated this will be a key condition of DUP backing for the Theresa May's party, who had been looking to end free movement as part of a so-called hard Brexit before the Tories lost their majority.

The DUP remains a strongly religious party, with hardline socially conservative positions on issues like gay marriage and abortion, which have garnered controversy over the years.

The party wants no extension to Northern Ireland's limitations on abortion, which restrict the procedure to when a woman's life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious risk to her mental or physical health.

Currently, fatal foetal abnormalities, rape and incest are not grounds for an abortion in Northern Ireland.

Gay marriage remains unlawful in the country, with Foster recently speaking of a "chill factor" affecting religious groups in the wake of the "gay cake" court case.

It ruled Ashers, a family-owned bakery, discriminated by refusing to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan.

The DUP leader accused the Northern Ireland Equality Commission, which took the case, of favouring the "metropolitan liberal elite" definition of equality.

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth have labelled the DUP a "climate pariah".

Sammy Wilson, the party's East Antrim MP, is a climate change denier who supported US president Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement.

He was appointed environment minister in Stormont in 2008.

Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland director James Orr said the country had become "a wild west for the environment" under the DUP.

"Theresa May must not allow the DUP to further weaken her already inadequate manifesto commitments to maintain environmental protections and preserve nature," he added.