Google Offers New Election Search Trends Hub

Whether campaigning at the national, state or county level in today's digital-first environment, political pros want to track what engaged voters care about in real time, and what better gauge than Internet activity? Enter the newly launched Google Trends Election Hub, a trove of free research. Search Engine Land recently reported on how the new Google hub site takes a deep dive into this year’s election-related search trends across the United States, with real-time reports on president and vice president candidate search queries, by state, plus search data on state and county political issues. And if you wonder how engaged the electorate is online, Google reports this year’s election-related searches are up 240% over the same period preceding 2012’s Election Day. Just some of the goodies you can cull: The hub home page has a chart graphing national search interest in each candidate over the previous week, as well as links to daily state-by-state search interests, voter registration searches, and the top election issue-related searches by state during the past week. There are also charts graphing the number of “Vote for [presidential candidate]” searches during the past week, and tracking of searches for “how to vote,” which Google reports is at its highest rate ever. At the state level, candidates and causes can drill down to the county level on issue interests; for example, while the economy is the most searched issue on average across the swing state of Florida, immigration is more searched in southern counties in that state. There's even a YouTube election map so you can see how many people are watching Trump vs. Clinton videos. Check it out at https://www.google.com/trends/story/election2016

As Social Costs Rise, Will Campaigns Boost Search?

Social media gets lots of political buzz, but cost realities could soon see social ads fighting paid search engine marketing for a share of 2016 campaign budgets, suggests a recent article for MediaPost's Data and Targeting Insider. The cost-per-click price of social ads on Facebook, for example, rose 180% in the first quarter of 2015, which makes those ads more expensive on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis than many search keyword buys, especially on Yahoo and Bing. So how are presidential hopefuls juggling the online channels so far? Per SimilarWeb analysis reported by Laurie Sullivan's Data Insider article, some candidates like Republican Ted Cruz have opted to put more into paid search, yet, so far, those increased search dollars aren't necessarily paying off in site traffic. For example, Cruz, who spent more on paid search than other presidential bidders, reaped the second lowest percentage of search traffic to his website, only 11.28%, behind Democrat Hillary Clinton's 26.95% or even Republican Rand Paul's 19%. Fellow Republican Marco Rubio does get less from search than Cruz, with a mere 7.43% of traffic and most of that (92.87%) organic rather than paid, but Rubio claims the majority of his website traffic from social media, about 25.98%. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates and causes may be interested to learn that 22.72% of Hillary Clinton's website visits come from referrals, mainly from Politics1.com and Mashable.com. And if your campaign is curious to know where to troll for supporters on the web, note that visitors to hillaryclinton.com tend to visit sites in the interest categories of auto buying, computer and electronics, business and industry, and law and government, while marcorubio.com fans distinguish themselves by also frequenting sites in categories such as people and society, and religion and spirituality. For more, go to http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/248182/political-campaigns-and-the-race-between-social-s.html

Improving Your Cause or Campaign Website Ranking

If your campaign or cause has a website that isn't coming up near the top of listings for online searches, you could be missing connections to your voter base and potential online donations. Here are some basic tips from Online Candidate, a political website provider, on how to boost your search presence. Here's a no-brainer: Optimize your website with text that includes the candidate or cause name, your geographic target audience (such as state or municipality), and key topics or issues in the campaign or nonprofit appeal. Make sure that important search terms are used in your headlines and tags. Update frequently; search engines like fresh content. Focus on link building. Relevant, active in-bound links increase your search position. Some link suggestions: newspaper websites with relevant articles and online voter guides; other local candidates or causes; political party websites; supporter group websites; websites of groups campaigning for similar causes; and local or regional sites. Try to create links back to your site with varied link text, especially including names, locations and issues to boost your search relevance across more keywords; for example, go beyond links for "Smith for Mayor" to use "Smith for Happytown Mayor" and "Smith for Happytown Dog Park." For more, go to http://www.onlinecandidate.com/articles/getting-campaign-website-rank-search-engines

Does 'Hijacking' Online Ads Work to Build Support?

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns engaged in online "hijacking" this election. It's a tactic that means people typing the keyword "Obama" into a search engine, like Google, are served Romney ads, and vice versa. It's a new twist in the political realm but not new to online marketers seeking competitive brand awareness. However, the practice of selling ads on competing search results also has stirred lawsuits against Google by companies like Geico and Rosetta Stone, alleging that it enables trademark violation. Court rulings have been mixed on the advertising legality. However, the real question for political campaigns and causes is whether they risk confusing or turning off the very supporters they seek to woo -- and the jury is still out on that. For a discussion of hijacking online ads in politics, see the "Bloomberg News" story at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-05/brand-hijacking-means-romney-s-voters-confused-with-obama.html