What Does Search Activity Say About The Election?

Oct 30, 2008 at 4:11pm ET by Matt McGee

With less than a week to go until U.S. voters choose a new president, Yahoo is sharing what it knows about White House-related search activity. Here are some highlights from Yahoo’s blog post today, which taps into data from Yahoo Buzz:

During the past week, Barack Obama has been the subject of more than twice as many queries as John McCain.
A week ago, there were six times as many searches about Cindy McCain compared to Michelle Obama.
Geographically, on a queries per capita basis, John McCain is getting most of his search interest from Washington, DC, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and others. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is a hot search topic in Washington, DC, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and others.

Yahoo also compared the search volume of the two presidential candidates head-to-head in five key states:

search volume comparison

Perhaps best of all, Yahoo says it’s seeing a “surge in look-ups for information pertaining to voter registration.”

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

See more articles by Matt McGee >

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