Looking For The Paris Hilton Campaign Video — How’d The Search Engines Do?

As much as I’ve enjoyed comedians poking fun at John McCain’s ad that uses Paris Hilton to mock Barack Obama, even better is a new fake ad where Paris Hilton herself takes on McCain. People are clearly turning to the web to find it – Google Trends shows plenty of people seeking it in a variety of ways. A quick look at that below, how easily (or not) the video can be found on search engines, and the video itself.

First, as I said, Google Trends reflects a variety of ways the public is seeking that video:

• paris hilton commercial
• paris hilton mccain ad
• paris hilton site youtube.com
• paris hilton energy plan
• paris hilton campaign video
• paris for president
• funny or die paris hilton

That’s 7 our of the top 100 "hot" queries currently showing. Not bad, Paris!

And if you try to find it? I did a quick test of [paris hilton commercial] at each of the major search engines:

• Google: The campaign video originally posted at Funny Or Die comes up third and then again at seven — the exact same URL, a glitch probably due to Google inserting a "See results" section designed to focus part of the page on [paris hilton mccain commercial]. That focusing makes sense, since there that Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr. fast food commercial that also dominates the results. Which one are people after?
   
• Yahoo: It’s all burger, all the time, more or less. So much for those looking for the brainy side of Paris.
   
• Microsoft: As with Yahoo, no luck finding the current commercial easily from the top results.

OK, the other famous commercial makes it hard to find the current one getting buzz. That’s still a good test for any search engine, how well they can deal with new material that people are seeking out — and Google passed. But I decided to try one more specific test, for [paris hilton campaign video]. The results:

• Google: Funny Or Die is there, along with plenty of other sites that either seem to host the video or talk about it. I’d have been more impressed if Funny Or Die was number one rather than number four, however. It is the original source. It’s also interesting that for the first time, I spotted a new search customization message on Google (telling me my results were customized for the Los Angeles area).
   
• Yahoo: Nice — they get Funny Or Die at number one. But bad — lots of duplicate results, the same story from various CBS television web sites repeated.
   
• Microsoft: Fail. Nothing.

Overall, I’d say Google comes out tops by effectively winning in both categories, but Yahoo gets kudos for doing well in the second test. Microsoft just wasn’t in the game.

Now go enjoy Paris talking about her energy policy:

No news yet of a Britney Spears response to her callout in the original McCain ad.