Sarah Palin has been a perennially popular Google search query. People may search for just “sarah palin” or they may go deep with “sarah palin paul revere” or “sarah palin bus tour.” But here’s something new: search interest for Sarah Palin has dropped since the end of June, while Michelle Bachmann is on fire. This chart shows Google searches in the US over the past 90 days:
Notice how the yellow line, representing Bachmann, has some big spikes in June, and remains elevated into July?
Next, just looking at searches in the state of Iowa:
I guess Iowans already know everything they need to know about Pawlenty and Romney.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
over 44k Facebook friends and this is the first time I’ve heard of Herman Cain. But have a look at the search trends for his name over the last month:
I’m really surprised to see that there were as many Google searches for Herman Cain as there were for Tim Pawlenty in the week of January 9 – 16. Clearly there’s a lot of interest in this Herman Cain fella. But there’s very little information about him in the press (about 1/10 as many results in Google News as there are for “tim pawlenty”). What’s this about?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sarah Palin today referred to media mentions tying the gun-sights and violent rhetoric used by her PAC to the horrific recent events in Tucson, Arizona, as “blood libel.”
I didn’t know what “blood libel” meant, but I had a feeling there was something way off in her comments when I started to see shocked responses from my Facebook friends – particularly Jewish friends. Here’s the definition of “blood libel” from Wikipedia:
Blood libel (also blood accusation[1][2]) refers to a false accusation or claim[3][4][5] that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.[1][2][6] Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.[4]
Looks like I’m not the only person wondering what the expression means – it’s one of the top trending search phrases on Google Trends, as seen in this screenshot:
Palin’s word choice veers over the line from bizarre to offensive, particularly when you consider that Gabrielle Giffords is Arizona’s first Jewish Congressperson, and that her religion was likely one motive for her attacker.
When I get coffee these days, the barista/o inevitably asks me the question: “what is SEO?” That’s because my coffee mug declares, “I (heart) SEO” in bold letters. But you know who really needs to figure out what SEO is? Rick Santorum. That’s because his name has absolutely *the* *most* *horrible* Google results that I’ve ever seen.
Feast your eyes on these results:
Did you notice the unbelievably disgusting definition of the politician’s name, displaying at the primo Google spot? That got its position because people with a little bit of SEO knowledge decided to screw around with Google’s ranking algorithm and make it happen. It’s a practice known as Googlebombing, and it has been used against politicians since the early 2000s.
Could something like this really make a difference in an election? I doubt it. But I’m the type who never thinks advertising influences my decisions. And SEO could be used to influence political outcomes in subtler and very clever ways.
If my company was hired to consult on SEO for a politician (hint, hint), one of my first acts would be to quietly buy up as many of the domains in the top 10 search results for his or her name that I could. We could then replace that content with our own message, or better yet, give the sites over to grassroots faithful who would do a much better job with it than a central processor could. It’s a lucky thing I only use my superpowers for good.
