• Marco Rubio
• Chris Christie
• Bob McDonnell
• Rob Portman
• Paul Ryan

At least, that’s the impression I get looking at the Google Suggest keywords this evening.  How could I have been so behind the times to miss the Obama Chia Pet craze?  How could I, who loves an embarrassing scandal as much as my fellow Americans, have missed the titillating tale that Santorum’s wife had an affair with an abortion doctor?  And how did I, a patriot in every corpuscle, manage to sleep through Obama’s adorable rendition of Al Green?

Good thing there’s Google Suggest to set me straight.  Here are today’s suggestions for Obama and Santorum:

If these lists teach us anything,  it may be this:  we are a nation of people with way too much time on our hands.  We’re tremendously interested in entertaining ourselves – with slapstick humor and sex, or ideally the two together – and not very interested in information.

The one and only important item on these two lists?  “Obama NDAA”, which refers to President Obama’s signing of the controversial defense bill (National Defense Authorization Act) that authorizes indefinite detention of US citizens.   Ron Paul described it as the beginning of martial law in the United States.  As a worrying turning point in our society, the NDAA just barely outranks “obama jokes” in the public eye.  We’ll be laughing all the way to the internment camps!

Why does this keep happening? Maybe it’s because politicians let advertising agencies handle their search engine optimization needs.  (Psssst.  Hey candidates.  How about you hire a real SEO to do your SEO work, next time?)  But I digress.

Danny Sullivan has written a beautiful analysis of how this latest bit of scata-search nastiness really came to be.  Through a combination of freshness, media attention, and social signals, Spreading Romney reached top ranks extremely rapidly.  Is it a sign that Google is doing a great job of displaying sites people care about?  Or is it the latest example of chinks in the mighty Google algorithm?

I still get questions about how this situation came to be, so here’s a primer:

• Google’s ranking algorithm is based on many factors, including the number and quality of external links pointing to a site, the words used as linking text pointing to a site, as well as the text on the site itself.
• The Santorum Google situation is not a classic case of Googlebombing.  Googlebombing is a technique that could make Santorum’s own site rank well for an undesirable search query by linking to Santorum’s site using that undesirable phrase as the linking text. For example, linking to Santorum’s site using the phrase “umbilicalheadlice” as the linking text might result in Santorum’s site ranking well for that term.  (but I won’t bother. We already know he is umbilical head lice).
• The Santorum Google problem is caused not by Googlebombing, but by standard SEO.  The problem for Santorum is that an undesirable website has a very high rank (#1 in fact) for Rick Santorum’s name.  The solution would be for  Santorum’s official website to naturally outrank this undesirable site.
• This is the same situation often experienced by professionals and celebrities who wish to control the top ranks for their name, but find it challenging to outrank a pre-existing site with many advantages.  The branch of SEO that specializes in handling these situations is sometimes called Reputation Management.
• The undesirable website for Santorum has a more external links pointing to it than Santorum’s official site, as seen in this comparison:
• However, Rick Santorum’s official site has more different domains linking to it and in most measures of SEO strength, it is a strong contender to the undesirable site.
• There is a good chance that with Santorum’s newsworthy performance in the recent Iowa caucus, his website will soon gain enough unique links that it will naturally outrank the undesirable site.

I normally try to maintain some neutrality on this website, but some politicians don’t deserve it.  Rick Santorum is one of those politicians.  May he froth his tiny self away from the public sphere soon.

Michelle Bachmann: tapped out by the end of summer 2011

Rick Perry: Wild ride with peaks after each bad debate

Herman Cain: a rapid rise in October followed by an equally rapid fall

… and next on the list: Newt Gingrich, whose star appears to be rising as of mid-November, 2011:

But all the hype surrounding the rise & fall of each of these contenders seems to be missing the fact that Ron Paul has remained solid throughout.   Here’s a chart showing Google searches for “ron paul” compared to searches for “newt gingrich” over the last 30 days:

The red line?  Yep, that’s “ron paul.”  It’s higher than Newt.  In plain words: The American public is more interested in Ron Paul than it is in Newt Gingrich. The search volume for Ron Paul has been consistent throughout the election season. And, while searches for other candidates often focus on blunders and gaffes (“rick perry oops” and “cain smoking ad”), Ron Paul’s searches seem to focus on policy and serious info: “ron paul education” “ron paul forums”  and “ron paul occupy”.  If Ron Paul manages to become the Occupy candidate, Dems better watch out.