Back to the March 2008 issue.

Searching for Politics

(by Craig Cooke, CEO)

The current presidential campaign has been a proving ground for the Internet. The sites offered from political candidates are more sophisticated than ever before. Email has been used extensively, as well as fund-raising microsites and, of course, search marketing.

Overall, it has been reported that the Internet is behind the curve in political spending. However this should change after the conclusion of this presidential race. The verdict will be in on how successful the Internet has been to the winning candidate. Search marketing will be one of the top contenders for the future of political spending. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both utilizing paid search to supplement their natural listings in the search engines. Perform a search on either candidate’s name, and you will see their official site in the top paid search position. John McCain has taken a different approach and has placed his fundraising page as the top paid search position. In my opinion, this is a better approach, as it is a more focused and effective method of spending money on this tool.

So what are people searching on in regards to this presidential race and other political issues? Here is a short list of what’s garnering attention (data provided by HitWise):

Top 5 Presidential Candidate 2008 Search Terms

  1. Barack Obama
  2. Obama
  3. Hillary Clinton
  4. John McCain
  5. Ron Paul

Note: Ron Paul had twice the amount of search terms than any other candidate at the beginning of the year but has rapidly dropped due to his focus on his congressional seat election for the past month. His campaign has been a wildly successful Internet story. It appears that mainstream media still has the upper hand when it comes to politics.

Top 5 Political Fast Moving Search Terms

  1. Vicki Iseman
  2. Larry Sinclair
  3. 2008 presidential candidates
  4. Hillary Clinton president
  5. Savage

Searching for political issues is on the rise. The campaign managers and candidates have not been utilizing search to its full potential, and they have a lot to learn. Hopefully next time, they’ll stop wasting so much money on expensive 30 second spots and divert more of the spend towards search and other interactive tools.





Statistics Corner

49 percent of Americans have purchased a product online, and 66 percent of “Online Americans” have purchased a product online according to a study performed by PEW Internet and American Life Project.

58 percent of Americans use the Internet to solve a problem, which is more than any other media and even more than consulting experts, family and friends according to a survey performed by PEW Internet and American Life Project.

43 percent of Internet users have been frustrated by the lack of information they encounter while using the Internet to find out about or buy goods or services according to a study performed by PEW Internet and American Life Project.

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