Wait, you didn’t realize Rick Santorum has a “Bing problem” that’s exactly the same as his well-documented “Google problem,” where a search for “santorum” lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum’s official web site?

He does. In fact, Santorum’s had his Bing problem for months, if not years. It’s just that everyone fixates on Google. Even Santorum does when he gets asked about it, such as telling Politico last year:

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

It’s A Search Engine Problem, Not A Google Problem

In the wake of Santorum’s win, and no doubt eventual questions in some quarters about why Google still isn’t “fixing” things for him, I thought it was worthwhile to flip things around and discuss his Bing issue.

It’s worth stressing that this isn’t just some gay-loving-Google-liberal-leaning-hates-Santorum thing and more a general problem Santorum has with the major search engines. In particular, it’s a problem that’s ultimately down to Santorum’s anti-gay views.

Santorum & Bing: Just Like Google

Here’s what Bing currently shows for santorum:

You can see that just after the special news area that Bing inserts above the regular results, the first listing that the arrow points to is for SpreadingSantorum.com, with a description that reads:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum

Santorum’s own official site, RickSantorum.com, appears third on the list.

Over at Google, which gets all the attention, the same issue happens:

Google’s news box appears further down on the page, probably because of the special election results box that appears at the top. Spreading Santorum, the anti-Santorum web site, appears as the first regular result. The official Rick Santorum web site appears fourth in the regular listings, one further down than with Bing.

By the way, the same thing also happens at Yahoo. Since Yahoo largely depends on Bing’s results, a search on “santorum” brings up the anti-Santorum site first, as it does with Bing — though after Yahoo’s own news units.

The news is better for searches for Rick Santorum’s full name, rather than just the word “santorum.” In that case, his official site ranks tops. Here’s Bing:

And here’s Google:

Does It Matter?

It’s becoming clear that Santorum’s Bing problem, as with his Google problem, isn’t stopping many Republican voters from selecting him over other candidates. So should Google or Bing really worry about trying to somehow fix it, especially when any type of change like that opens them up to accusations about censorship or political favoritism?

Perhaps.

The SafeSearch Solution

The biggest issue to me might be the fact that as interest in Santorum grows, you’ve got more children in schools likely to be searching on his name. Getting a fairly explicit description in their search results talking about “lube and fecal matter” and “anal sex” might not be what a lot of parents want them seeing.

Both Bing and Google have a SafeSearch filter that is set to “Moderate” by default, which means it only filters out explicit images. Setting this to “Strict” will keep the Spreading Santorum site from appearing in text listings. That’s something parents and teachers can use.

It’s Not An Irrelevant “Google Bomb”

How about a manual intervention to solve this problem, which has mistakenly been called a “Google Bomb.” Didn’t Google do something like that for President George W. Bush?

“Liberal leaning” Google did. The Google Bomb fix wasn’t specifically designed just for Bush, who found people were linking to his biography in a way to make it rank tops for “miserable failure.” It was meant to fix any type of case where people tried to make pages rank for odd phrases that they weren’t relevant for. But questions about the prominent Bush listing helped prompt the fix.

The Spreading Santorum site isn’t ranking because of some type of Google Bomb campaign. It ranks because it is entirely relevant for “santorum.” It was created years ago as a protest against Rick Santorum’s anti-homosexual views. Those views are entirely relevant, in fact arguably more relevant the further Santorum advances as a candidate to be president of the United States.

To drop the site, Bing and Google would actually be making the type of political move that Santorum seems to think that Google is already doing (he clearly doesn’t seem to think about or care about Bing).

But How About A Disclaimer?

There is something that Google is long overdue to implement. Consider what it used to show when you’d search for “miserable failure” and got the George W. Bush biography:

See the ad above the listings that the arrow points to, which say:

Why these results? These results may seem politically slanted. Here’s what happened

The ad led to an explanation at the official Google Blog. Google does a similar thing today, for a search on jew, which brings up an anti-Jewish web site:

It’s long past time for Google to do something similar for searches on “santorum.” They are going to confuse some people, who will assume Google’s trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.

I’d say Bing should do the same thing, but Bing’s never even tried to have explanations like this. Maybe it should consider it.

But Spreading Santorum Is Here To Stay

As for Rick Santorum, as I wrote before, the best way to solve his Google and Bing problems would be to change his views on homosexuality or make a donation to a gay marriage-rights group. That’s what Dan Savage, who created the Spreading Santorum site, told Mother Jones in 2010:

Savage has not forgiven Santorum for his seven-year-old comments: “Rick would have prevented me and my partner from being able to adopt my son,” he points out. But Savage does have a deal for the politician. “If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now.”

That’s unlikely to happen, so Santorum will have to continue living with the Spreading Santorum site showing up alongside his own.

Related Entries

• Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search
• Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs
• Google Says Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American
• After Santorum’s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google Problem

Defining Santorum

For those who aren’t familiar with Santorum’s situation, back in 2003, the former US Senator angered gay columnist Dan Savage, not to mention some in the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community, with several anti-homosexual comments during an interview with the Associated Press.

Savage’s response was to follow up on a reader’s suggestion that he hold a contest to define “santorum” to mean some type of sex act. The winning definition was picked in June 2003:

The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.

Rotten.com covers some of the history here. Mother Jones also did a good article last year on the topic.

Definition in hand, Savage launched a web site — Spreading Santorum — with letters and background information about the meme. An associated blog also operates, started in September 2010, after it was clear Santorum would be running for the US presidency.

Santorum: Google It & Bing It With Caution

Unsurprisingly, the site has long ranked in top results for a search on “santorum.” Currently, it even outranks Santorum’s official campaign web site on both Google and Bing.

Here’s Google:

The top arrow shows how Spreading Santorum currently ranks at the top of Google’s results. The lower arrow shows how Santorum’s own campaign site ranks fifth in the results or sixth, if you count the news box as a listing of its own.

Here’s Bing:

Bing manages to list the main site, the associated blog, then the main site again under a different domain name — all while failing to list Santorum’s own site. The last one was so far down (but still in the top results) that I had to piece the page together, as I couldn’t screenshot it all.

Santorum’s “Google Problem” isn’t just a Google problem, as you can see. It’s also a Bing problem, plus a Yahoo problem (since Yahoo uses Bing’s results). Even Chinese-based Baidu lists Spreading Santorum over Santorum’s own site:

Only tiny Blekko, of the search engines I surveyed, doesn’t list the Spreading Santorum site over Santorum’s own, in the top results. That’s because Blekko doesn’t list either.

Postscript: Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta emailed me that by default, a search on Santorum is automatically filtered using Blekko’s /politics slashtag, which eliminates the Spreading Santorum site but not Santorum’s own site. That appears on the second page of results (and thus is largely unnoticed by searchers. Searching for [santorum /web] overrides this and brings them both up, with Spreading Santorum above Santorum’s.

Blame Liberal, Irresponsible Google

Despite this being an industry-wide phenomenon, it’s Google — as is often the case — that takes all the blame for Santorum’s problem. Yesterday, he spoke more harshly about it than I’ve heard in the past. Politico reported:

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

Where to begin in dissecting this? I’ve already covered that this isn’t a Google-specific problem. Bing, Yahoo and Baidu are all as “irresponsible” as Google, despite getting none of the blame.

Perhaps A Positive Impact?

Next, is it really an apparently negative “impact on the country” that Santorum has a bad listing about him in search engines? Actually, some might argue that it’s a positive impact, a sign of a healthy, important debate as part of the presidential campaign.

Santorum is a presidential candidate, in a country with millions of LGBT citizens. If you’re searching about Santorum, and you’re part of that community, you’d probably find his views on homosexuals and private sex acts to be a really important issue.

If Google (or Bing) pulled that listing, because Santorum didn’t like it, you’d also likely be wondering what else Google (or Bing) might censor to ensure political candidates weren’t mad at them. That wouldn’t give you a lot of faith in the search engine you’re using.

Removing Filth Or Censoring?

But wait! We’re talking “filth” here, as Santorum says. This is just some disgusting web site that should be removed, right?

Actually, no. The web site’s home page is devoted to the alternative definition of “santorum,” but that’s only part of what the site is about. As I said, behind it are the letters and responses to Santorum’s comments in 2003, as well as the associated blog. The blog is actually filled with critiques of things Santorum has said on the campaign trail recently.

Google & Its Conservative Agenda

Still, Google wouldn’t allow this type of listing to appear if it were for a Democrat like Joe Biden, as Santorum said. Right? Google’s just anti-Republican!

If that were the case, then why did Google help Republican President George W. Bush with his own “Google Problem,” where a search for “miserable failure” brought up the official George W. Bush biography?

After Bush endured this for three years, Google brought out a “Google Bomb” fix. Why not leave that going until Bush was gone, if Google was all about playing politics with its search listings?

Actually, Google is loath to touch its results in any way, shape or form. That’s because if it does intervene in any way, there’s some interest group that will immediately claim a bias.

Way back in 2004, an anti-Jewish web site started ranking in Google’s top results for “jew.” Despite Google cofounder Sergey Brin being Jewish and himself disgusted with the result, it stood. Intervention, when Google’s ranking algorithms had spoken, was seen as harmful to user trust.

Steven Levy covered this in his book, In The Plex (it’s a great book; buy it):

Critics urged Google to exclude it in its search results. Brin publicly grappled with the dilemma. His view on what Google should do—maintain the sanctity of search—was rational, but a tremor in his voice betrayed how much he was troubled that his search engine was sending people to a cesspool of bigotry. “My reaction was to be really upset about it,” he admitted at the time. “It was certainly not something I want to see.”

“I feel like I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on the world,” he said. “It’s a bad technology practice.” What seemed to shake him most was the fear that people would believe that Google was somehow endorsing Jew Watch. “I don’t want people to be under the impression that these are decisions we somehow make,” he said.

But What About Fixing Google Bombs?

Of course, Google does make changes to its ranking system all the time, ones that it feels improves relevancy overall. That “Google Bomb” fix I mentioned earlier was part of this.

The fix wasn’t intended as some type of special intervention for President Bush. Rather, it was designed to reign in a weakness in Google, where if you could get a lot of links pointing at a site saying certain words in those links (in the anchor text), the site might rank for those words, even if it had nothing to do with them.

The articles below provide more background about all this, including how the fix works and how it is run periodically over time:

• Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs
• Google Says Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American

Michelle Obama & Image Search

A different situation happened in 2009 with the First Lady, Michelle Obama. A search for her by name, in Google Images, brought up a pretty offensive image, where a monkey’s face had been superimposed over her own.

Google initially removed it, gave an explanation that didn’t quite hold up, then the image returned and remained. Recently, we noted it has gone again. Google said its algorithms had changed over time in general to cause this.

The stories below have more; the image doesn’t show at Bing, though I’m not sure if it ever did.

• Google Removes Offensive Obama Image; Was It Justified?
• Offensive Michelle Obama Image Returns, Google Buys Ad To Explain
• Disturbing Michelle Obama Image Makes A Case For Facial Recognition In Google’s New Image Search

Santorum Isn’t A Google Bomb

If you believe Google, the Michelle Obama change was part of a general relevancy improvement. Fixing Google Bombing was also designed to improve relevancy. But Santorum’s case isn’t, despite what sometimes gets reported (we’ve done it, too), a “Google Bomb.”

Indeed, back when the Google Bomb fix was released, Matt Cutts — a Google software engineer who was involved with the change — explained:

“santorum” isn’t a Googlebomb, it’s straight SEO. Here’s the difference. With a Googlebomb, you’re causing someone else’s site to rank. With SEO, you’re promoting your own site. So spreadingsantorum.com is promoting themselves for “santorum,” which is SEO….

A Googlebomb is when you’re trying to cause *someone else’s* site to rank for phrases like “враг народа” or “talentless hack” or “mouton insignifiant” or whatever.

Speading Santorum isn’t ranking just because there are links pointing at it that say “santorum” in it. It’s ranking because in addition to this, it is indeed relevant to Santorum in terms of its content.

It’s not positive about him, but it’s still relevant in the same way that if you search for Coke, you get the “Killer Coke” anti-Coca Cola web site:

To “fix” Santorum’s concern, Google would have to remove the site from its index. That’s a type of censorship that I think many people would disagree with, especially when they understand that the site isn’t solely just some joke definition designed to embarrass Santorum.

Google SafeSearch & Filtering For Children

There is a case where this result, for this search, is potentially is irresponsible. That’s when children are searching for “santorum,” something that came up when I talked with Talking Points Memo for its story on the Santorum situation yesterday.

It’s fair to say, as the election campaign heats up, some kids might be doing school research about the candidates. Getting that definition is probably what most adults — even gay adults who dislike Rick Santorum — wouldn’t want children to see.

The good news is that if Google’s SafeSearch filter is set to “strict” in Preferences (by default, it’s set to “moderate” and only filters images), Spreading Santorum gets filtered out:

You can see that the site is no longer at the top of the results. It doesn’t appear on the first page at all. Santorum’s own site continues to be listed, as the bottom arrow points at.

The top arrow points out an oddity. The Mother Jones article I mentioned earlier gets through, despite “anal sex” being in the title. Maybe “lube” and “fecal matter” are seen as more sensitive and thus causing Spreading Santorum to be filtered. I don’t know for certain; I have a question out to Google on this.

Let me stress again, this only happens when SafeSearch is taken up to the “Strict” level. By default, there is no such filtering.

Bing: Not So Safe

Over at Bing, SafeSearch (Bing has copied the same name as Google’s own filtering product), set to “Strict” using Preferences, doesn’t seem to change anything:

All the sites I mentioned before remain. The Urban Dictionary site with its explicit description also remains; Google filtered that out.

Can Santorum Fix It Himself?

Santorum, of course, wasn’t talking about Google being irresponsible in terms of children. He just doesn’t like this listing in general, for obvious reasons. But, is there anything else that can be done?

Chances are, no. The definition has been out there for years. It’s well known in certain quarters, and it keeps getting more widely know, such as through shows like The Daily Show, as we covered previously: Presidential Hopeful Santorum’s “Google Problem” Makes Daily Show.

Santorum was probably wiser a few months ago with his “just live with it attitude.” He told Roll Call in February:

“It’s one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak,” Santorum told Roll Call….

Roll Call asked Santorum why he didn’t reach out to Google to try to remedy the problem. He said he never contacted the search giant directly, and his longtime consultant John Brabender dismissed the problem as a matter of free speech.

“There’s still the First Amendment,” Brabender said.

In the Politico story out yesterday, the headline says Santorum has now contacted Google over the listing, but there aren’t any specific details of exactly how. This could have been as simple as submitting feedback that any searcher can file if they feel a search result isn’t relevant.

Google’s statement (which it clarified to me was given to Politico, and not to Santorum, as Politico says) has the usual advice of working with other site owners.

For more about that, see our detailed guide below to the incredibly limited situations where Google itself will remove content:

• Removing Pages From Google: A Comprehensive Guide For Content Owners

Time For Some SEO

While Spreading Santorum isn’t going away, potentially, there’s more Santorum can do to raise his own profile.

It is poor relevance from both Google and Bing that his campaign site is ranking behind Spreading Santorum. From a relevancy standpoint, for most people, I’d say it should be first. It’s what most people doing that search are likely trying to find — except for the search voyeurs who heard about the odd ranking.

His challenge is that the campaign web site is so new, comparatively speaking. Building links over to it would likely help. That’s something supporters should be encouraged to do.

There’s also likely some SEO work that can be done. I’m not going to do an SEO review of his site to check, however. I’m pretty tired writing all this up already. But Rick, if you’re reading, see my previous advice for Bill Gates (he took it), as well as our “What Is SEO” page for further guides and information:

• Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates
• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

Santorum also has Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, each with their own pages. These are all excellent pages that potentially could rise in the rankings, if Santorum supporters were encouraged to start linking to them.

That’s not going to oust the SpreadingSantorum site, however. For any real success there, Santorum would need to be like McDonald’s, where years of launching site after site (mcdonalds.com, playatmcd.com, mcstate.com, aboutmcdonalds.com, happymeal.com, ronald.com) has managed to push anti-McDonald’s sites like mccruelty.com or mcspotlight.org to the second page. Santorum’s not as big as McDonald’s, nor does he have that much time.

There’s Always Saying Sorry

There is one thing that possibly might work to make Spreading Santorum disappear for his name. That would be a real rapprochement with the LBGT community. If Santorum were to have a real change of heart, then perhaps that community and those who support it might not feel they should link over to Spreading Santorum. Perhaps Savage would decide not to run the site at all. Perhaps Santorum might even be redefined once again, this time as something pleasant.

As someone with several close gay friends, who believes strongly in gay marriage (Rick, it’s about loving parents of any type, not just straight parents), who has two sons with a gay godfather (Hey, Greg, how’s gay Hollywood today?), I’d sure love to see that happen.

Postscript: See our update following the Iowa caucus results: How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse.

Currently, when you search for Santorum, the first result is a blog apparently started by gay syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, who masterminded a successful campaign to associate the Senator’s name with anal sex — on Google and Bing, at least. Savage, and other like-minded folks, launched and supported the site against Santorum back in 2003, after the Senator made comments against homosexuality.

“Vulgarity” Or Freedom Of Speech?

“The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate,” Santorum told Roll Call. “It’s unfortunate that we have someone [Savage] who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak.”

While the search results may not have significant impact in places where Santorum is already known, they may turn off voters who know little or nothing about the politician. Santorum is widely thought to be laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2012.

Politics & Google Bombs

The situation highlights how important search savvy is in politics, at a time when so many turn to search engines for information. One of the more well-known political Google Bombs was started by opponents of President George W. Bush, who made it so a search for “miserable failure” brought up Bush’s biography page as the first result. Google made a change to its algorithm in 2007 to diffuse that Google bomb.

Those results no longer come up, but Santorum’s problem remains. That’s because his isn’t really a true Google Bomb, even though it’s often characterized that way.

Santorum told Roll Call that he hasn’t reached out to Google directly, and his consultant John Brabender said he didn’t want to stifle free speech. Roll Call reported that former Santorum staffers consulted “technology experts” about their options years ago, and concluded that there was little they could do.

Surprisingly, it apparently hasn’t occurred to Santorum to mount a Savage-style defense, getting his supporters to link to his official sites to boost them higher in rankings. He has also declined to take out paid search ads for his name. (Interestingly, a search for “miserable failure” still brings up paid ads for the George Bush center).

A search for [gulf oil spill] returns an ad from Google that reads “Latest Oil Spill Update: Watch live video of the oil spill cleanup effort.” Here is a picture of the ad:

And here it it is in context with the search results page, the second ad in the right column:

Google often advertises its own products and services, but I believe this may be the first time they have advertised their oil spill “Crisis Response” page.

Postscript: We asked Google about the ads and the page. We were told they’re similar to things Google has done for other disasters in the past, such as here for the Haiti earthquake.

Google also has blog post up today talking about a new feature on its oil spill crisis page, where in cooperation with the White House, people can leave questions they’d like US President Barack Obama to answer during his address tonight.

Ambulance Chasing, Google-Style

Lawyers are using Google, Bing and Yahoo to actively bid on oil spill-related terms such as bp oil spill claim, oil spill sue and bp lawsuit:

Oil Spill: The New Mesothelioma

It feels similar to the competition on search engines that’s long gone on among legal firms to find people who may have high-damage claims, such as suffering from mesothelioma. In fact, consider this:

That’s the landing page at oil-spill.com, where legal firm Beasley Allen hopes to catch some potential clients. Beasley Allen also runs mesothelioma.law.pro, where you’ll find this:

Look familiar?

Google is just one of many advertising channels being utilized to reach out. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal spotlighted the chase for those who might have claims:

Hoping to reel in more clients, attorneys have snapped up domain names such as bigoilspills.com and put up billboards along highways saying “Oil spill hurt your business?” and advertising their services.

BP Battles On PR Front

It is not just litigation lawyers that are using online marketing to gather steam. BP is engaging in damage control by bidding on related terms through Google AdWords. In fact, they are casting a pretty broad net. Currently, they are bidding on everything and anything related to the spill. This broad match strategy is probably costing them thousands, if not millions of dollars in AdWords spend.

British Petroleum is using this money to compete for top placement amongst news stories and lawyer ads. Apparently the company is anxious for the public to “Learn More about How BP is Helping” by sending the paid search ads to a dedicated landing pages like here and here.

BP recently acknowledged the AdWords campaign. BP spokesman Robert Wine told The Fiscal Times.

The main aim is a marketing tool, to help the people who are most directly affected — fishermen, local businesses, volunteers in the cleanup. We want people to be able to find us, so we can work out how to minimize the impact on their lives and businesses.

Despite the statement above, it is hard to imagine BP has a hard time being found. While I’m a fan of paid search marketing and know how extremely effective it can be for marketing, I can think of better ways to spend massive amounts of money in the gulf. How about cleaning those oil-poisoned pelicans?

Postscript: Since this was written, Search Engine Watch has done a nice post trying to estimate how much BP might be spending on its campaign — around $1 million per month, it figures.

So. Do you interview others or try to get others to interview you?

Either way, the queries are the same to find your prospects. Here are query ideas to get you started.

Media interview queries

[kw] intitle:expert interview or talk or discuss or answer
[kw] expert interview
[kw] intitle:”group interview”
[kw] intitle:”advice from”
[kw] intitle:”chat with”
[kw] intitle:”conversation with”
[kw] intitle:”discussion with”
[kw] intitle:”q and a with”
[kw] intitle:”tips from”
[kw] intitle:”q/a with”
[kw] intitle:”q&a with”
[kw] intitle:”question and answer with”
[kw] intitle:”questions and answers with”
[kw] intitle:”thoughts on”
[kw] intitle:”talks with”
[kw] intitle:”talk with”
[kw] intitle:”discusses”
[kw] “group interview”
[kw] intitle:”thoughts from”
[kw] intitle:experts interview or talk or discuss or answer
[kw] intitle:experts interview or talk or discuss or answer
[kw] intitle:expert interview or talk or discuss or answer

To speed up your research, auto-create these interview queries in our new link building query tool. Just add your keyword and select “Thought Leader” from the Asset Type dropdown menu.

Running queries and analyzing your interview prospects

The queries above show you people and sites that conduct interviews (targets for getting interviewed) and they show you people who submit to interviews (targets for interviewing).

If you want to get interviewed, use our guide to qualifying link prospects to identify the sites that will have the greatest impact on your rankings. For large digs I’d also recommend removing the “intitle:” command from the queries above, running each query and then analyze them using the SERPs dominator process. This will show you a far larger universe of prospective interviewers (hat tip to Dennis Hette.ma for this idea).

If you want to interview people in your industry, make note of people who consistently give interviews and gather all the URLs of all their interviews. Interview subjects are highly-likely to help promote your interview with them. Make note too of community metrics that illustrate their social reach such as Twitter follower count, how many times they’ve been listed on Twitter, their blog subscribers, etc.

By no means should your interview prospecting stop with queries though: your existing relationships are another great source for interview prospects.

To interview or be interviewed?

Interviewing others—especially group interviews—has the potential to earn many links but far fewer leads. Getting interviewed earns you one link but many leads. If you’re newer in a space, build your community and reputation by interviewing others. If you’ve been in the space longer this does not give you the “right” to be interviewed, but you will have a better chance of landing interviews through outreach.

Interviewing others, either solo or in a group, requires careful question preparation. If you land an interview with a prominent industry expert you must go back and review their previous interviews (it won’t do to ask questions they’ve already answered elsewhere, unless you use a different angle). In group interviews you must create engaging questions that help your guests demonstrate expertise and meet the information needs of your audience.

Getting interviewed requires far more finesse and relationship building. You’re asking others to “vouch” for you to their readership, plus do the actual work of interviewing you which may require becoming more knowledgeable about what you do. If you don’t do your homework in approaching potential interviewees you’ll come off looking arrogant and overreaching. But, the leads are worth the effort.

Further thoughts on interview execution

Preparation is everything, whether you’re interviewing by phone, email, audio podcast or on video. Treat every interview like a serious business engagement by conducting thorough background research. Know where your subject went to high school, his first job after college and be prepared to ask how these historical nuggets impacted his ascent to the top of the industry (unless those questions have already been asked in other interviews). But you’ll know this because you already sourced and took notes from all previous interviews by querying: ["person's name" interview].

On the other side of the microphone, in some cases you may get more interviews if you write and answer great questions for yourself and simply submit the interview as if it were a guest post. Researching previous interview questions with industry experts—and staying relentlessly, thoroughly helpful—will help you ask yourself some solid questions that make it easier for your interviewer to hit the publish button. Further, be aware that the person interviewing you might be interested in your capacity for pushing the interview in your community. It won’t hurt to let them know how you plan to help promote them!

Group interviews done well are exhaustively thorough. Here are two fantastic examples from the link building space: 11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out and Link Value Factors. Your goal as a group interviewer is to dig out nuggets of actionable brilliance using questions and your decisions about organization and editing. It’s a lot of work, but if you have great interview subjects and incisive questions, the links will follow. Plus, promotion is “baked in,” as the interview subjects will mention the interview to their network.

Today I’m going to explore the systematic use of paid channels like AdWords and Facebook ads as channels for intervening in quickly moving public relations incidents. Ads can play an important role as powerful tools for supporting the usual tactics of social media and reputation monitoring/management campaigns. I’ll cite real-world transient PPC mashup scenarios for your own brainstorming.

What is a transient public relations event?

Positive and negative short-lived incidents come at businesses in waves, and often require a marketer’s fast attention. Sometimes they’re planned and other times not. Examples include:

• The New York Times features your brand on the front page Sunday morning.
• Your construction project will block a major city street and the public needs information.
• A brand’s rockstar sports-icon spokesperson gets busted for driving under the influence.
• A Mayo clinic researcher announces a breakthrough in the effort to cure breast cancer.
• You just opened a new manufacturing facility, gainfully employing dozens of local citizens with good jobs.
• Your CEO was just invited to a business lunch at the White House.
• The local university’s women’s hockey team just won the NCAA national championship.
• Any event, either abrupt or planned, that falls under the seven classic nodes of public relations.

Just like classic works of literature, these examples of transient public relations events have beginnings, middles and ends. When these pre-scheduled or accidental ephemeral happenings rear their pretty (or ugly) little heads, we must deal with them, maximizing potential benefits and/or minimizing real damage.

When it comes to transient PPC, we start by boiling things down to straight business objectives by asking the following questions about the episode at hand:

• How does the event affect the public’s perception, aligned with or contrary to our brand’s business objectives?
• Is rapid communication required to serve our customers, dispel misunderstandings, celebrate a victory, diffuse anger, communicate crucial information, stake out positioning to preempt an expected response or reap the benefits of something wonderful? In other words does the transient event warrant a response, to our advantage or defense?
• Would instant keyword domination in search engine results (SERPs) by PPC, in Bing, Yahoo and Google, give an edge in propagating our brand’s message? Is PPC appropriate in this instance and can it be executed tastefully to the brand’s advantage?
• If so, what is the appropriate keyword grid? Should the PPC net be cast further than direct brand name searches?
• Where should the traffic go? There are those who believe that PPC traffic should always point to a brand’s website landing page. Sometimes, though, the best path to branding efforts is to vector traffic to public social media profiles, independent publishers, federal agencies, news stories, press releases or other reputable third-party sites that offer independent opinions or validation.
• Would a Facebook ad be tactically useful and fitting? With over 300 million users, certain constituencies are readily accessible to the savvy marketer’s guile via Facebook advertisements.

Implementing a successful transient PPC campaign

Responsible run-and-gun PPC starts with an open mind and pre-planning. Scheduled events, like the corporate charity ball, product release or new vice presidential hire are theoretically easy. Break down traditional big brand barriers and encourage PR, marketing, advertising and event planning stakeholders to organize PPC support ahead of time.

PPC support of “events of the unplanned kind” can originate as part of the normal reputation-monitoring report and react grid. As a general rule, keywords that alert the online reputation management team about positive or negative situations are reasonable candidates for PPC targeting. It’s normal for brands to judge a suitable response to evolving situations.

Here are a few examples of transient events that could warrant a PR response. I’ll break each possible PPC campaign down by trigger event, keyword grid, goal, alternate goal, message, alternate message, destination URL geo-targeting and run length.

Example #1 – Trigger event (unplanned): Mid-authority blogger writes a complimentary article about a brand’s products and links to lead generation page.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, category keywords.
• Goal: Send quiet traffic to reward blogs that support the brand. Garner good will in blog community. Delight bloggers who probably watch analytics and monitor their reputation.
• Alternate goal: Drive secondary traffic from blog post we’re supporting, back to our lead generation page.
• Message: “Introducing the [blogName] blog.”
• Alternate message: Use of the brand name.
• Geotargeting: National.
• Run length: One week, with a goal of diverting 30% of our normal direct brand searches to this blog.

Example #2 – Trigger event (planned): Brand’s parent company is hiring 45 new full time employees in a community of 65,000 and plans to build a new factory.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, name of city, city services, HR recruitment searches for factory’s skill set.
• Goal: Brand quality of life and company commitment to community, visitors, locals and potential employees.
• Alternate goal: Raise awareness of brand/company to locals plugged in enough to seek out city services by internet search.
• Message: “[Brand], Proud to be a member of our community.”
• Alternate message: “We’re hiring.”
• Geotargeting: Statewide.
• Run length: One month – two weeks prior to factory opening and two weeks afterward.

Example #3 – Trigger event (unplanned): Brand product results in a child’s death and a product recall.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, “child’s name,” [cause of death]
• Goal: Reassure the public, clarify what products are affected, and provide vital information for safety.
• Alternate goal: Links for SEO, with a plan for diffusing unflattering keywords from news and other high authority sites.
• Message: Disseminate straight-up information.
• Alternate message: “[Brand] cares and operates in the interest public’s safety first.”
• Geotargeting: Statewide.
• Run length: Indefinite as defined by daily SERPs testing, analytics, buzz, etc.

Example #4 – Trigger event (unplanned): The New York Times features your brand on its front page Sunday morning.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, keywords customers use to vet the featured product (e.g “[product] review” and “[product] information.”
• Goal: Brand the product/company as worthy of such acclaim, to folks searching specifically for the brand.
• Alternate goal: Secondary traffic.
• Message: “Check out [brand] [product] in yesterday’s New York Times.”
• Alternate message: “[Brand] is notable, legitimate and mainstream.”
• Geotargeting: National.
• Run length: 1-3 weeks.

Paid search campaigns can be a valuable weapon for influencing perception with transient events, which traditionally are associated with public relations. Though not always appropriate, instant prominence via paid listings in SERPs can be a useful arrow in the marketing quiver. To be successful with such campaigns, it’s important to communicate clearly with other departments and pre-plan goals and tactics.

It’s a fascinating look into their “offensive” and “defensive” strategies concerning paid search.

Meanwhile earlier this month SEM agency, Did-It, issued the report “2008 Search Engines and Politics: A Study of Attitudes and Influence.” The study tries to measure the relationship between search behavior, political attitudes and likely voting behavior.

There are still a meaningful number of undecided voters and the Did-It study tries to correlate search and click behavior with potential for a voter change of opinion. Did-It found that the Internet was second only to cable TV as a medium chosen by voters to gain additional information about issues and candidates:

Among those using the Internet for research and information, 44 percent used search engines and more than 26 percent of voters using the Internet clicked on paid links:

Additional information about the study is presented here. You can also request a copy of the report directly from Did-It.

Regarding paid-search bidding and keyword strategies, the report concludes:

These results show that bidding on opposition-related keywords can have a slight effect, and that praising oneself could be more persuasive than denigrating the opposition in this case. It also shows that searchers who prefer to visit only sites that favor the candidate of their choice are not likely to change their opinions, and those who visit sites that oppose the other candidate are doing so for inoculation purposes and to reinforce beliefs they already hold.

Many were concerned with potentially negative results and cited fear of user-generated negativity as a primary factor limiting willingness to venture forth into social media channels. Some had horror stories to tell. Here are key takeaways which emerged from the session—valuable lessons for any search marketer thinking about using social media as a lever for reputation management.

Expect to make mistakes. First, any active social marketer can expect to make mistakes which cost sleep, cause angst, and alienate others—it’s the reality of the game. Subscribe to the theory that “nothing ventured is nothing gained” and forgive yourself in advance for inevitable screw-ups. Social media is just that: social. Humans tend to be unpredictable, especially in groups. Anyone who dives into social media without accepting that the results will be a mixed-bag-learning-curve risks being prematurely discouraged at inevitable rejection. Hell, several record companies said “no” to Elvis. Not everyone is going to love you.

Do not lose your cool (or, stupid is as stupid does). This can’t be stressed enough. No matter what the appropriate PR crises response turns out to be, there is seldom equity in hasty emotional comebacks. It rarely works to respond during the heat of anger, so get a grip. When rejected, it’s normal to feel hurt, anger, sadness, and even rage. Count to 350, wait until tomorrow, eat some comfort food, or find another way to chill out.

It’s true that some disasters require an immediate online response, but these instances are truly rare. There’s nearly always 5 minutes or 2 hours available to wait without impacting the ultimate outcome. Pay attention to emotional red flags and be the most mature party at the table.

Fight fire with water, not fire. When some social media twit unfairly flames your company (or you personally), it’s tempting to nuke them. Search marketers often have access to authority websites to get their retribution tactics indexed prominently in the organic SERPs. We know the forums to post to, blogs to comment in, and have a good understanding of what it might take to completely trash someone in revenge.

As human beings, we’re wired to defend the home turf by any means possible. That said, take a moment to distinguish the degree of response necessary. Fight the heat rising off the back your neck whilst your ears turn red and ask if a “high road” response will suffice in this situation.

Often we advise clients to actually thank the flamer for initiating what could become a productive dialog. There’s very little comeback for the provocateur if his or her rant is met with the response, “Thank you for the insight. We appreciate you raising your concern.” We’ve seen multiple cases where this tactic converts the provocateur to a friend. Online or off, this approach is a timeless technique for dealing with angry customers.

Don’t anger the natives. Preempt debacles by holistically participating wherever online networking takes you. Many—OK, most—passionate social community members either dislike or downright hate marketers. Their concerns are valid in many cases because average-to-bad SMO wanna-be media marketing moguls seriously abuse the privileges of membership. Be a responsible social media marketer.

Reckless or selfish SMOs dilute the neighborhood content stream, wrecking it for everybody. This common phenomenon particularly irks long term tagging and bookmarking site users. Be cognizant of the norms. Give exponentially more than you take. Respect the indigenous cultural and join in to preserve what’s best about the community. Give a hoot—don’t content pollute. Never spam.

Don’t bash the hornets’ nest (i.e., intentionally provoke). I should take my own advice about this one and will vouch for the fact that troll hunting makes for excellent sport. Don’t do it. One obvious method for avoiding a fight is not to start one. Taking the initiative to preemptively attack someone who hasn’t bothered you is an unfortunate tactic favored by losers.

Get input from others. It’s uncanny how approachable the “stars” in our business are to unknowns in need. My social media inaugural foray was to blithely attack Yahoo regarding early Panama geo-targeting application screw ups. It was very intense.

After quite a row in a SearchEngineWatch forum where Yahoo spin doctors were doing damage control at my expense, I actually approached Danny Sullivan, as I had heard him speak on this topic. He was completely unselfish and helpful in bringing the entire affair into perspective. I learned a thing or two about the mutually supportive qualities of our community.

These days, there are a number of highly qualified social media experts frequenting the halls of Sphinn. I have never met a competent SMO who was unavailable to a respectful approach seeking insight in a difficult situation. When you’re in over your head, get advice from a master.

Don’t try to save the world if the injustice does not really matter. Get over it. You’re not Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, or Muhammad. It’s not your place to solve all the injustices on this green earth. Saving the planet is a time consuming endeavor and should only be partaken in the rarest of circumstances.

True, some causes call for a good fight. I admit it that my massive personal investment in fighting StumbleTrolls was a gut reaction to being a Jewish man publicly flamed with profane, murderous, and violent Nazi hate rhetoric. That fight was a once in a lifetime event where I put public reputation on the line for something I deeply believe in. That should be the criteria for using social media and SERPs for personal or cause-related warfare.

Cast your ego aside. A savvy lawyer gave me incredibly useful advice at my wedding. He said, “When my wife and I disagree, I tell her that she ‘might’ be right.” He pointed out that responding with a non-binding statement ceding to the other’s perspective really gives nothing away at all except respect. Success and peace is what matters, not who’s right.

When you are attacked in social media and every fiber in your body wants to throttle someone because they’re so totally wrong, check your ego and take a breath. It doesn’t matter if your side “wins” if the flamers have already burnt your reputation down. It’s rather difficult to unring a bell.

Pre-plan to deal with crisis & opportunity. Ideally, it’s best to have a contingency plan in place for when things hit the fan. We teach clients to create a designated PR council, of which we’re a member. Depending on the size of your organization, this could be as basic as running the situation by your spouse or as complex as assembling the board of directors. Regardless of what’s appropriate in your situation, think ahead and have your resources lined up and ready to go.

Out there on the street, there’s a palpable fear of user-generated media. Most marketers understand that at least some component of their marketing mix may indeed be somehow rooted in social media. A commitment to preemptive and responsive tactics to deal with negativity can be essential to overcoming apprehension.

Marty Weintraub is publisher of aimClear Blog and President of aimClear Search Marketing Agency.

Andy Beal recently launched Trackur, which starts at $88 a month, and aggregates data from a variety of sources.

If you wanted to go the el cheapo route, you can gather data from a variety of sources via RSS feeds. Services like Bloglines, Technorati, Google News, Google Blog Search, BlogPulse, and Icerocket all allow you to save custom RSS feeds aligned with your name, your brand name, or your URL.

You can subscribe to any/all of these RSS feeds in any feed reader like Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, My MSN, NewsGator, or Netvibes.

Google also owns a service called iGoogle, which allows you to display many RSS feeds on the same page at the same time. If you want to share a set of feeds with others in your company you can email that tab to a friend, or use Google Apps and can create a company page for your marketing department. I created one here and made it publicly available.

Stay alert to changes

Two other handy tricks for keeping up with your reputation are Google date-based search filters and Google Alerts. Google’s date-based filters are available from their advanced search page, and allow you to search for things like mentions of “Aaron Wall” OR “seobook” indexed by Google during the last 7 days.

Google Alerts allow you to track brand mentions in a specific vertical or the web as a whole, and get free email notifications as it happens or once a day. Some examples of how you can use Google Alerts:

• be the first person to get bad news and fix the issue before it spirals out of control
• ask people who mention you if they would be willing to link to you
• find people who are linking to competitors that should be linking to you (as mentioned by Eric Ward here)

By setting up alerts, tracking new search results, and monitoring discussions across blogs every day via RSS feeds, you can easily monitor what others are saying about your company, find brand evangelists, build links, and address any potential brand damage sooner rather than later.