Topic: John McCain

Google Hires Ex-McCain Spokesperson For Top Communications Job

The Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting that Google has hired Jill Hazelbaker to replace Matt Furman as head of corporate communications. Most recently Hazelbaker worked for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg during his successful re-election campaign. Google has historically hired people with Washington experience, but bringing on Hazelbaker may anticipate a somewhat more […]

Google To Allow Trademarks To Be Used In AdWords Copy In US

Google, which recently liberalized the use of trademark terms as a trigger for showing ads, has again opened up its ad policies to allow trademark terms to be used within ad copy, in certain circumstances, within the United States. Currently, registered trademark holders can request that Google prevent their trademarks from being used in ad […]

Obama Stimulus, Predictions And Search

In retrospect it appears that relative search query volumes (Obama vs. McCain) did presage the outcome of the November election. Now it appears they predicted the recession as well. The Yahoo Search Blog says that search query trends subtly predicted the recession long before its formal designation by economists: Though we learned only a month […]

SEO

Ask.com: Top Search Trends of 2008

"Maverick" earns bragging rights as the word of the year; Disney's Tweeny-boppers take over the Top 10 list of celebrity-based searches; shopping for the best deals on travel and entertainment were top of mind in a tightening economy, and queries in the form of a question still reign supreme at Ask.com.

SEO

What Does Search Activity Say About The Election?

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:

Google Getting More Political: CEO Endorses Obama

Google is getting more political these days. Yesterday I wrote about the company’s lobbying efforts on behalf of its paid search deal with Yahoo, which isn’t necessarily “political,” but arguably a political necessary. Also yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt decided to endorse (and later campaign with) Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The company issued a […]

Joe The Plumber, The Presidential Debates & Search

Anyone watching tonight’s US Presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama heard both candidates speak directly to “Joe The Plumber” several times. No, it’s not a fictional Joe. No, it’s not Sarah Palin’s Joe Six Pack. He’s a real person that Obama spoke to earlier this past weekend about economic concerns and taxation. But […]

SEO

SearchBiz: Corn Farmers Oppose GoogleHoo; Online Ad Spending In Trouble?; McCain Campaign Upset With YouTube Takedowns

Roll Call this week lays out the current state of the Google-Yahoo advertising deal, and says Microsoft is exercising “its considerable political clout” in Washington, DC, against Google. The article portrays Microsoft as aggressively using its in-house and outside lobbyists to rally public and private support against the deal. And, get this, one of the […]

Wikia Search Releases Third Party Search Enhancement Platform

Wikia Search, the “open source” search engine that launched to great fanfare earlier in the year, has introduced a new platform (Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions or “WISE”) that allows third parties to provide an enhanced search result—known as a “WISEApp”—for specific keywords. WISEApps allow publishers or searchers to enhance search results, in a similar way […]

PPC

Obama Vs. McCain: Paid Search Keywords

Valleywag (using data from Hitwise) posts about the paid search campaigns of the two major US presidential candidates, over the past 12 weeks. The post shows a list of the actual keywords being used by the campaigns. It’s a fascinating look into their “offensive” and “defensive” strategies concerning paid search.

PPC

Search Marketing & The US Presidential Race, Case Study: Sarah Palin

After reading yesterday about how savvy both US presidential campaigns seem to think they are about search marketing, I decided I’m going to take a closer look at watching them. In particular, I noticed yesterday that both seemed pretty lame when it came to tapping into rising queries that you can spot on Google Trends. […]

PPC

Obama Vs. McCain: Display Vs. Direct Response

The Wall Street Journal analyzes and compares the online marketing strategies, successes and weaknesses of the two US presidential candidates. McCain turns out to be the more savvy search marketer, while Obama does a better job at SEO and is investing more in online display advertising.

John McCain’s Google Bomb

Chris Bowers is trying to push in certain articles into the Google search results for a search on [john mccain]. His goal is to “Google Bomb” these articles into the search results before Labor Day. ComputerWorld has a write up on his efforts. But as Danny described in the past, this type of Google Bomb […]

Google Makes “Related Searches” Fresher

Google announced that the related search feature is now fresher then ever. What that means is when you search on certain queries, Google may show you a line just above the search results with related search queries. Those related search queries are fresher, in the sense that they now should show more related searches based […]

McCain Using Google To Vet VP Candidates

According to Reuters, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is using Google as a tool to do background checks on potential running mates: “You know, basically it’s a Google,” he said to laughter at a fund-raising luncheon when asked how the selection process was going. “What you can find out now on the Internet — it’s […]

SEO

Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

Each month, I compile Search Month — a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but […]

US Candidates Hit Digg, Fail To “Get” The Social News Site

Digg The Candidates is a new area on Digg that allows you to see what US presidential candidates are digging and doing on Digg. That’s right, you can check out what Barack Obama (with about 3,200 Digg friends) and Ron Paul (with about 6,000 friends) are up to. But is it really the candidates doing […]

SEO

Hitwise Launches 2008 Election Metrics Tracking

Hitwise has launched a new data center that will track a range of metrics associated with the upcoming 2008 US election. It will reportedly update those metrics every Tuesday. The categories that will be tracked include the top websites from both parties, top political search terms and the fastest moving political websites, among several others.

Google Launches Public Policy Blog

Google has been doing more and more over the past few years to actively influence public policy issues (such as on net neutrality or recently, US immigration) as well becoming more of a potential public policy target (such as on privacy last week). As part of its outreach, the company has now launched the Google […]