Happy Presidents Day!

By Brooke Nichols

How Search may affect future Presidents Days...

2008 Presidential Election Candidate Reputation Study
At the time of this study, fifteen of the eighteen declared 2008 presidential candidates had negative search engine listings associated with their name, with both Republicans and Democrats achieving less than 50% positive sentiment, according to research from Marketing Pilgrim, an internet marketing blog and consultancy. The study examined the search results for the names of ten Republican and eight Democratic candidates across the first twenty search results on Google and Yahoo.

Online Political Spending to Hit $73 Million in '08 Cycle
Spending by political advertisers on Internet ads, marketing and promotional efforts is poised this election cycle to be 150 percent higher than the last presidential election cycle. However, although a new PQ Media report shows it could hit $73 million by November, Web revenues from political advertisers are still a drop in the bucket.

Internet Marketing Report on Presidential Campaign Websites
This report examines the use of SEO and social media in the 2008 presidential campaigns using by manually examining the candidates’ websites.

Search About to Upset the Political Applecart
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 75 million Americans over the age of 18 look online for news or information about politics or the upcoming campaigns. That's more people than voted for either George Bush (62 million) or John Kerry (59 million) in the 2004 presidential election.
The online population and the voting population largely overlap each other.
· 69% of registered voters are Internet users
· 79% of registered voters under age 60 are Internet users
· 84% of registered voters under age 30 are Internet users
· 63% of those who voted in the last election are Internet users
· 81% of those under age 60 who voted in the last election are Internet users
· 87% of those under age 30 who voted in the last election are Internet users