If the 2008 Elections Were Based on SEO

What if the elections were today, and whoever had the best search engine rankings for their campaign website was the winner?

I just ran a report that focuses on three candidates from the Democratic party (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards), and three from the Republican party (Romney, Giuliani, and McCain). I was curious to see whose website would rank the best when their own name was searched for. That is, if you do a search on Google for “hillary clinton” does her campaign website come up first, or does some other website, perhaps not the website her campaign would prefer, come up in the top spot? Worse yet, what if a candidate’s website didn’t come up within the top 30 results for a search on their own name? Here’s how the numbers played out:

Search engine / Keyword	Competition	Clinton	Romney	Obama	Edwards	McCain	Giuliani
Google
john edwards	21,100,000	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	2,300,000	-	3	-	-	-	-
barack obama	2,770,000	-	-	4	-	-	-
john mccain	2,980,000	-	-	-	-	-	-
rudy giuliani	1,500,000	-	-	-	-	-	-
hillary clinton	7,610,000	3	-	-	-	-	-
Yahoo!
john edwards	63,400,000	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	8,430,000	-	2	-	-	-	-
barack obama	8,470,000	-	-	2	-	-	-
john mccain	25,000,000	-	-	-	-	15	-
rudy giuliani	4,680,000	-	-	-	-	-	2
hillary clinton	34,200,000	2	-	-	-	-	-
MSN
john edwards	1,032,575	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	315,450	-	6	-	-	-	-
barack obama	156,879	-	-	6	-	-	-
john mccain	188,486	-	-	-	-	4	-
rudy giuliani	348,102	-	-	-	-	-	13
hillary clinton	3,171,167	6	-	-	-	-	-

Assuming the candidate who did the best job optimizing their own site for their own name was the winner, it would clearly be John Edwards. But of course, this is hardly a reliable predictor. Because ranking is often a product of how much competition there is, perhaps it’s not a good sign that John Edwards is so easily able to get the #1 position. It might indicate nobody else is interested in him and therefore no content about him is being written.

However, if you look at the competition column, you’ll notice there are more pages bearing the name “john edwards” than any other. But this is a false hope for you Edwards fans. Think about it, how many other people are named John Edwards other than the candidate? How many others are named Barack Obama? I think you get the point.

Moving on, I can’t help but think it’s not a good sign that McCain and Giuliani’s websites aren’t coming up within the top 30 results in Google for their own names. What other websites are coming up and what are they saying about the candidates that might differ from what the candidates would like to say? If the candidates’ website aren’t showing up in at least the top 10 results chances are people are developing their opinions based on sources other than the one source a candidate would prefer and which they have complete control over–their own website.