Not surprisingly, searches related to voting are increasing on Google, with the 2012 presidential election just days away.
It always makes me sad to see searches for “register to vote” that seems to be coming just a bit too late. Look at this chart, which shows searches in my home state of California:
Bollucks! Voter registration for the November 6th election closed in California on October 22nd. To all those Google searchers on the 23rd: my condolences!
Here’s a comparison of search volume for the term “early voting” in various locations. From a quick glance at a variety of states, it certainly looks like battleground states have a stronger interest in early voting than others. And from this chart – North Carolina, you are rockin’ it!
I also noticed that Romney’s campaign is sponsoring a paid Google ad in Nevada that triggers when searching for the phrase “vote early”, as seen here:
(Funny, he’s not sponsoring “vote early” in my state of California… I wonder why? 
)
Here’s a quick rundown of which states show Romney Google ads for “vote early”
- Florida: No Romney
- Wisconsin: No Romney
- Ohio: No Romney
- Wisconsin: No Romney.
- Nevada: Romney
- New Hampshire: No Romney.
- Virginia: No Romney.
- Colorado: No Romney.
Odd, isn’t it? Why did Nevada get singled out for Romney’s early voting ad among the swing states? And why isn’t Obama in the mix at all?
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Politico.com has an article today on Google search patterns during the Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. SearchEngineLand.com commented on the same Google data, as well as Yahoo search information here.
Real-time debate searches were generally pretty typical of political search as a whole: people mostly searching for light materials and personal info about the candidates. Things like, “how old is joe biden” and “paul ryan shirtless.” And, I always love it when people search for vocabulary words (in this case, “malarkey” and “conflate”) when the words are used in a debate. Way back in 2008 the same thing happened when John McCain used the word “repudiate” during a debate with Barack Obama. McCain also introduced “cockamamie” during that debate – apparently he and Biden are using the same vocabulary coach in their debate prep.
Malarkey… cockamamie… what colorful synonym of “bullshit” with they come up with next? My prediction: “horse puckey.” It’s a beauty my dad used to use. Yup. Horse puckey. You heard it here first.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Search engine industry analysis website, Searchengineland.com has a great report about Yahoo! and Google search behavior during the week of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions here.
In the article, author Matt McGee reveals that a larger number of Google & Yahoo! searches took place during the democratic convention as compared to the republican convention. I don’t think that indicates that Dems won the day, but you can draw your own conclusions. My feeling is it’s more of an indication that Dems are more likely to be wired.
What I would have loved to have seen – but wasn’t published by Google – is the words that were most often combined with “obama” or “romney” in search queries. On Yahoo!, it’s telling that the biggest “obama” search was actually “michelle obama dress!”
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Really, people? He’s running to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, but these are the things you care about most?
Granted, there are at least some people interested in Paul Ryan’s plan – a.k.a his budget & health care plan. Let’s see what Google shows us for “paul ryan plan”:
I think Google is doing a great job of providing informative, recent content in search results for these Paul Ryan search terms. If there are still any undecided voters out there, I sure hope they make their decision based on his plan and not his shirtless pics or “black ex-girlfriend”!
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