A continuation in our series on how the major presidential candidates are doing in their search marketing efforts. Here are the previous two rounds: Round 1 and Round 2.
The 2008 Presidential debate circuit, along with announcements of record breaking fundraising in 3Q, builds further intrigue in the 2008 race to the Whitehouse. Fred Thompson has entered stage-right with much fanfare yet very little energy added to the Republican side. John Edwards lags in polls, but could lurch forward in
Still, Clinton, Obama, Romney and Giuliani are clear front runners and one thing is for sure – when you do name searches on Google, you can access a lot of information about these candidates. It’s my belief that name searches are going to be greater vote and election outcome influencers than are issue based queries. The name query is where the most intent lies. No doubt Google queries surrounding the candidate’s names are going to be a crucial influencer in forming opinion and votes for this race.
According to Google Trends, when comparing the 4 name search candidates, in Y2007 Hillary Clinton has the most name searches followed by Obama, Romney and Giuliani. Obama has the most news references in Y2007.
What’s really interesting is that to date in 2007 Barack Obama leads name searches in
Social Media groundswell by supporters of Republican Congressman Paul is interesting too. We’re always monitoring how Social Media affects organic search results so I may begin to track how he’s doing on a name search, even though, he’s likely to not be a national front runner. Paul has many, positive first page results – most of which sites can revised and/or manipulated by his campaign in one form or another, I would think. Others have written a fair amount about Paul’s surge. Josh Dorkin has an interesting post at timeforblogging with some graphics displaying the groundswell for Paul earlier in the year.
A couple of interesting notes in this round about authority sites: The US Votes Congressional Database of Washingtonpost.com has really proven to be an authority site in the Presidential candidate name search. This is showing up for both Clinton and Obama due to their congressional backgrounds. As well, MySpace, YouTube and Ontheissues.org continue to be leading influencers in the Search Engine Result Pages for most candidates.
In our Round #2 coverage in August, 2007 Barack Obama was the search marketing leader with a grade of A-. Here is how each of the four front runners rated in that Round:
- Barack Obama: A-
- Hillary Clinton: B+
- Mitt Romney: B+
- Rudy Giuliani: B
So how are the candidate’s name searches faring in Round #3?
Mitt’s campaign upgrades to A- as he continues to holds the top 2 spots on Google with the official site and there is really nothing negative on the 1st SERP. His bio page continues to come up in the #2 spot on Google search which is extremely important for people who are just learning about the candidate. New to this SERP as well is a positive grass-roots campaign site. Though his campaign may not be directly involved it’s a tremendously positive development for them and they hold the #5 Search Result with this site. Perhaps the campaign influences this site in the background?
Romney’s staff should watch out again for John McCain’s campaign which is buying the keyword Mitt Romney and displaying the following ad:
Romney for President?
Why Not Learn More About John McCain for President
JohnMcCain.com
SERP results: 2.39 mm
#1 – Campaign
#2 – Campaign
#3 – Wikipedia
#4 – News from Google Universal Search Mix
#5 –electromneyin2008.com (Grassroots)
#6 – MySpace.com/mittromney
#7 – Foreign Affairs
#8 – Ontheissues.org
#9 – YouTube.com/mittromney
#10 –
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 6
Age of Website – 2002
Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not seeing results displayed here in NYC.
StumbleUpon reviews is showing the Tag: “Politicsâ€
Extremely surprising is not to see aggressive AdWords campaign from
In round #2 the site was using the words “Exploratory Committee†in the description, and they have revised this to Official campaign site provides news clips, video, a blog and information on making contributions. So now they are really leveraging this coveted space better.
SERP: 12.4 mm
#1 – Campaign
#2 – Campaign
#3 – Wikipedia
#4 – News from Google Universal Search
#5 – Senaate
#6 – Whitehouse
#7 – MySpace
#8 – Sentate.gov
#9 – Votehillary.org (Grassroots)
#10 – Washingtonpost.com
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 6
Age of Website – 12/1998
Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not when I searched during this post! That’s a problem.
StumbleUpon reviews show the Tag: “Politics”
Obama is downgraded one rung in this round as I’m not seeing aggressive AdWords use and perhaps more importantly the search result returning at position #7 on Google’s SERP. Snopes.com has a post which attempts to debunk the Fox News and Insight Magazine smear campaign. While the attempt to debunk is positive, the fact that the issue is even showing on page 1 Google may be negative overall because it’s raising an issue, true or false – no matter. The StumbleUpon tag as “Liberal Politics†could wind up hurting this candidate in the long run with swing votes. Wikipedia has again taken over the #2 spot from the Senate bio page. Interestingly Obama leads in Del.icio.us page saves with 865 saves (compared to Giuliani with 78 pages saves).
SERP: 3.7mm
#1 – Campaign (tagged as liberal politics in StumbleUpon)
#2 – Wikipedia
#3 – Senate.gov
#4 – News
#5 – Senate.gov
#6 – MySpace
#7 – Snopes.com (possibly negative)
#8, 9 – Washingtonpost.com – Voting record
#10 – YouTube
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 7
Age of Website – 4/2004
Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes but not showing in this round in NYC.
In this round Rudy Giuliani’s campaign remains level at a B. On the positive side, they have revised the homepage title tag of the official campaign site to be a bit more aggressive and positive. Instead of just saying “Joinrudy 2008 – Homeâ€, the homepage is now titled “Joinrudy 2008:: Rudy Giuliani for President†much more proactive and positive and they are getting double name bolding on that result. No longer is Zev Adler’s site showing http://www.rudygiuliani.com/ in the first SERP, so that is good for Rudy.
On the negative side, there are negative search results and pages creeping further into the 1st result page on Google. A Rollingstone.com story associating Giuliani with Rove and Bush and Firefightingnews.com (Firefighters Union Letter On Rudy Giuliani) slamming him are both negative portrayals of Rudy, and it shows in the search results. The campaign must bolster the positive results such as the Time.com article and since Google News is injected into search results either at #1 or #4 when you search, they really have leverage their PR angles and get in the press consistently with positive news to counter such negative results.
Del.icio.us is showing 69-78 page tags/saves (depending on the exact URL www – or not) New to this SERP is Ontheissues.org, Washingtonpost.com Rollingstone.com, and Firefighting news.
SERP: 3.2 mm
#1 – News
#2 – Campaign (Tagged in StumbleUpon as “Politicsâ€)
#3 – Wikipedia
#4 – NYC.gov bio
#5 – Ontheissues.org
#6 – Draftrudygiuliani.com (a
#7 – Rollingstone.com (Negative)
#8 – Firefightingnews.com (Negative)
#9 – Washingtonpost.com
#10 – Time.com Person of the Year
PageRank – 6
Age of Website – 1/2007
Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes
Official Site AdWords Top Result Copy –
Support Rudy Giuliani ‘08
Join Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Team Sign-Up Now at Rudy’s Official Site
www.joinrudy2008.com
Round #3 sees Romney steal the lead from Obama.
- Mitt Romney upgraded to A-
- Hillary Clinton remains flat at B+
- Barack Obama downgraded to B+
- Rudy Giuliani is level at B
One final note is that more and more, the name searches are showing Google’s Universal Search News results mixed into the 1st Google Search Engine Result Page. Blog searches are also being suggested at the bottom of Google’s 1st SERP. What’s the significance of this? Search Engine Marketers – particularly in reputation management should be well aware of news results. Online and offline Press and blogging is still is and likely always will be extremely important in Search Marketing.
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Stats on Candidate’s Official Website: (source: SEO for Firefox)
11 Responses to “2008 Presidential Search Marketing Face-Off: Round #3”
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It’s interesting that Ron Paul, who has actually led in search volume since May of this year, hasn’t made your list. Why don’t you add Ron Paul to the list of candidates you are analyzing? Just a suggestion.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=hillary+clinton%2C+barack+obama%2C+rudy+giuliani%2C+mitt+romney%2C+ron+paul&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0
Catalyst –
Thanks so much for your response and suggestion. I did mention in the post that I may add Ron Paul as there is so much swirling around him in Social Media.
“Social Media groundswell by supporters of Republican Congressman Paul is interesting too. We’re always monitoring how Social Media affects organic search results so I may begin to track how he’s doing on a name search, even though, he’s likely to not be a national front runner.”
However to date (the last 3 rounds) have been focused on those who are national contenders, so as many have noted, I’m not sure Paul is actually in that category…I could be wrong.
Thanks again for checking in and for the suggestion.
Paul has 8 million dollars in the bank from donations up until the third quarter, and he’s sitting at 2.25 million so far for the 4th quarter. He’s geared up to do very well in the early states.
You really ought to include him in your report, especially consider he is the most widely search candidate on the internet.
Thank you,
Jacob
Wow, I’m embarrassed. Did I just type that?
The last paragraph should read;
“You really ought to include him in your report, considering he is the most widely searched candidate on the internet”
[...] 2008 Presidential Search Marketing Face-Off: Round #3 » 10e20 – Search, Design & Social [...]
@ Jacob
Thanks for stopping in to 10e20’s Blog. Ron Paul indeed is heavily searched in Google. I am considering including him, but then I’d probably have to include a 3rd Democrat to even things out. And, I’m trying to keep things compact.
As well we are expressing no political view and as such – it could really be any candidate for analysis purposes. I selected the 4 current candidates based on name recognition well beyond the 2008 Elections and overall polling stats.
As time goes forward – there may be reason enough to include others.
Thanks again for stopping by.
[...] with the official site and there is really nothing negative on the 1st SERP…. source: 2008 Presidential Search Marketing Face-Off: Round #3, 10e20 – Search, Design & [...]
[...] yet very little energy added to the Republican side. John Edwards lags in polls, but c source: 2008 Presidential Search Marketing Face-Off: Round #3, 10e20 | Social media marketing, search engine optimization, website [...]
Now that Obama is the head of the Government, how good he's going to be is something we all have to wait and see. What legacy is he going to leave behind? I would have loved Hilary to be there, being an ardent fan of her husband, Bill. But since she didn't make it, we all have to move forward and support the elected president. Hoping Hilary will contest again and win!
Engaging stuff:D will visit soon.
Whoops, the link at the end of my comment didn’t work properly. It should have said .