The premise here is simple:
1. Lots of voters will go online during the 2008 Presidential Election to learn about candidates, their positions on issues, and their voting records in an effort to best educate themselves before they vote.
2. Search engine results can be influenced. You can add a layer of information defensibility or you can go on the offensive to pollute the results of an opponent.
3. The recent Presidential Elections have been very close.
The General Election is more than 18 months away and it would be a little early to start influencing that audience via search engine results. The Primary Elections, however, are within the magical Search Engine Reputation Window of Opportunity. With the G.O.P. in such a state of disarray, the likelihood of the Democratic Primary effectively giving us our next President is pretty good.
So, let’s take a look at the popular* declared and potential candidates to see who is holding down the fort, who is on the offensive, and who is losing votes by being asleep at the wheel.
* (I’ve omitted the also-rans because, unfortunately, they have no chance to win and I don’t have spare time to research guaranteed losers. However, if said uncompetitives want to give me a call to fire up a viral Internet campaign to make up some ground, I wouldn’t say no. 
)
THE REPUBLICANS
1. Rudy Giuliani
Estimated monthly search volume: 75,000 - 100,000
Negative search results:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8 in [Google: Rudy Giuliani] [MSN: Guiliani] [MSN: Rudy Giuliani] [MSN: Rudy Giuliani]
B) http://www.lewrockwell.com/blumert/blumert39.html in [Google: Rudolph Giuliani]
Paid Search:
Owns the top Sponsored Listing for most queries. Mitt Romney, John McCain, PAC’s also bidding on his name.
2. John McCain
Estimated monthly search volume: 75,000 - 100,000
Negative search results:
A) http://dir.salon.com/topics/john_mccain/index.html in [Yahoo: John McCain]
B) http://www.realchange.org/mccain.htm in [Yahoo: Sen John McCain]
C) http://www.recallmccain.org/ in [Google: Sen McCain]
D) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkTFVIxMQs in [MSN: John McCain]
E) http://therealmccain.com/ in [MSN: John McCain]
F) http://www.usvetdsp.com/story22.htm in [MSN: Sen McCain]
Paid Search:
Owns the top Sponsored Listing for most queries. Mitt Romney, John McCain, PAC’s also bidding on his name.
Notes:
You can bet good money a clip of John McCain singing “Bomb Iran” will rank all over the place within a few weeks.
3. Mitt Romney
Estimated monthly search volume: 75,000 - 100,000
Negative search results:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9IJUkYUbvI in [Google: Mitt Romney]
B) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/31/politics/main1851199.shtml in [MSN: Mitt Romney]
Paid Search:
Owns the top Sponsored Listing for most queries. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, PAC’s also bidding on his name.
4. Newt Gingrich (Undeclared)
Estimated monthly search volume: 50,000 - 75,000
Negative search results:
A) http://www.realchange.org/gingrich.htm in [Google: Newt Gingrich] [Yahoo: Newt Gingrich] [MSN: Newt Gingrich]
B) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889756/ in [MSN: Newt Gingrich]
Paid Search:
Not actively bidding on Paid Search, though supporters are.
5. Fred Thompson (Undeclared)
Estimated monthly search volume: 50,000 - 75,000
Negative search results:
None
Paid Search:
Mitt Romney, GOP, grassroots supports all buying ads.
THE DEMOCRATS
1. Hillary Clinton
Estimated monthly search volume: 250,000+
Negative search results:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo in [Google: Hillary Clinton] [MSN: Hillary Clinton] [MSN: Senator Hillary Clinton]
B) http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/elec04.s.mo.farmer.clinton.ap/ in [Yahoo: Hillary Clinton]
C) http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/Hillary%20Meter.htm in [Google: Senator Hillary Clinton]
Paid Search:
Not bidding on Paid Search. RNC, PAC’s, supporters are.
2. Barack Obama
Estimated monthly search volume: 250,000+
Negative search results:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycbAsB9-ps (ends with “Clinton for President”) in [MSN: Barack Obama]
Paid Search:
Owns the top Sponsored Listing for most queries. McCain, PAC’s
3. John Edwards
Estimated monthly search volume: 250,000+ (very popular name, so probably a bit misleading)
Negative search results:
A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AE847UXu3Q in [MSN: John Edwards]
Paid Search:
Not purchasing Sponsored Listings for his name. Mitt Romney, PAC’s, are bidding on his name.
4. Al Gore (Undeclared)
Estimated monthly search volume: 100,00 - 150,000
Negative search results:
A) http://www.gargaro.com/algore.html in [Google: Al Gore]
B) http://sethf.com/gore/ in [Google: Al Gore]
C) http://www.gargaro.com/algore.html in [Yahoo: Al Gore]
D) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BjrOi4vF24 in [MSN: Al Gore]
Paid Search:
Not purchasing Sponsored Listings for his own name. PAC’s are.
OTHER PARTIES
1. Ralph Nader
Estimated monthly search volume: 10,000 - 25,000
Negative search results:
A) http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm in [Google: Ralph Nader] [Yahoo: Ralph Nader] [MSN: Ralph Nader]
Paid Search:
Not purchasing Sponsored Listings for his own name. Nobody else is either…
CONCLUSIONS:
- So far, the candidates are doing an average to above-average job in defending their names in the organic search results.
- If search volume is any indicator of voter interest, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the clear leaders. John Edwards benefits from a very popular name and I did not include him in that group as the other search terms besides his exact name showed little to average volume.
- Hillary Clinton not buying Sponsored Listings for her own name is, well, Bush-League. If I’m her campaign manager, somebody gets fired for that.
- Fred Thompson may have the most immaculate and defensible search results due to his acting career.
- MSN Live absolutely has the freshest search results for the candidates.
- YouTube is going to be a real problem for the candidates when they slip up.
- There are many, many sites that are close to ranking that would rank if they had a clue about SEO. This represents a problem (or an opportunity, depending on what side of the spear you are on) for a few candidates.
- If you were to assume that search volume showed voter interest and then factored in the negative results ability to dissuade all that interest, a betting man would put money down on Barack Obama being our next President.
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3 Responses to “Presidential Candidate Reputation Management: Could Your Search Results Cost You The Presidency?”
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Brian, awesome post! For sure the campaigns will jump into SEO and SEM if not already the case. They are already very active online.
Another way to look at it is to study coverage and extract sentiment and opinions from consumer generated content. Instead of looking at how many times these candidates are searched for; you can look at what is being said about them throughout the blogosphere and news content.
At a simplistic high level, Internet Sentiment analysis does the following:
1. Crawl content
2. Ddiscriminate between objective and subjective content to dig out opinions, not Clinton’s birth date
3. Extract entities such as names, places, events, …
4. Tag parts of speech (subject, verb, complement …)
5. Semantic categorization to understand sub-topics and more
6. Calculate tone polarity and score leveraging sophisticated computational linguistic technology.
Internet Sentiment analysis is the natural evolution of SEO and SEM, tapping into social media.
Very nice post. I hope the campaigns keep having online dialogs, a much nicer reflection on democracy than a one-way communication channel like blasting advertising dollars on TV ads.
-arnaud fischer
Search is the Internet OS!
Do a search for Cindy McCain, it is pretty nasty.
You know, I was surfing around looking for some examples of websites that did a GREAT job of getting their audience (readers) to turn into active linkers/blog commenters/etc. - like an army of little marketers.
I couldn’t believe where I found it: John McCain for President.
The John McCain for prez site had this amazing page - I’ve never seen it done so well - with 4 examples of What You Can Do (if I remember correctly, they were things like: blog about us, link from your website, comment on blogs, make a site here). Each had a cute icon and explanation.
Darn, I should have taken a screenshot because I can no longer find the page. Still, I was damned impressed that the McCain folks totally “got it” and did such a great job with the new social internet.
If anyone sees that page - email me a screenshot!
Gradiva Couzin
http://www.yourseoplan.com/