WebProNews » Candidates

Google Votes On Candidate Speeches

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:34:00 +0000

Work continues apace at Google with their speech recognition technology, something they demonstrated with the release of a new tool.

Google’s pretty good at search technology. The ability to search beyond plaintext, such as speech recognition, remains something of a distant goal, especially compared to what EveryZing does with speech to text.

Cracking open speech in videos opens that video content to universal search. Google wants to do this to improve its search relevancy. To demonstrate what they have accomplished so far, Google announced an Elections Video Search gadget from their Research group.

The new entry for iGoogle “only searches videos uploaded to YouTube’s Politicians channels.” Those include speeches by Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, along with speeches made by other politicos that have been added to the relevant channel.

“Speech recognition is a difficult problem that hasn’t yet been completely solved,” Google said, which we take to mean they haven’t solved it yet. But the research continues as they strive for better accuracy and more relevance in search results for video.

Yahoo Unveils Political Dashboard

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:40:45 +0000

Yahoo News teamed up with Yahoo Buzz to come up with a Political Dashboard for anybody interested in following the traveling circus, er, race to the White House.

In addition to the latest polls, the dashboard also tracks current search buzz for each candidate as Yahoo users look for more information. It also keeps track of how much money each candidate has raised.

But what’s also neat about it, aside from the slick look of the thing and the demographic breakdowns, is that users can break down results by state. For example, if you know that Kentucky has a long tradition of voting for the candidate that eventually wins, you might pay extra attention to who’s leading in that state, at least according to search buzz.

Currently, it’s Barack Obama piquing Kentucky searcher interest, as well as Ron Paul, by an overwhelming majority (74%) on the Republican side.

On a national scale, though, when you include polls, searches, the prediction market, and money raised, it’s a much different picture, with the old standby political powerhouses like Clinton and Giuliani in the lead overall.

Compete Talks About Democratic Candidates

Doug Caverly — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:30:01 +0000

When it comes to the 2008 presidential election, you can listen to the smartest political pundits, or, if you like, flip a coin – the election’s just too far away to be sure of anything. But we can form best guesses, and Matt Pace has done precisely that with an article titled “If Clicks Equaled Votes in November – Democratic Candidates.”

Pace’s findings contradict what a recent analysis of Google Trends revealed. They should, however, stack up well against David Utter’s article on the Republican field (since both used Compete statistics).

According to Compete, then, the campaign website with the most traffic belongs to Barack Obama; Obama’s site received 318,179 unique visitors in November. Hillary Clinton’s website was the closest runner-up, but it got just 289,615 visitors.

Things looked even more dismal for John Edwards, whose site received only 136,002 unique visitors. Pace got into the geographic distribution of visits, though, and wrote, “Edwards’ focus on Iowa, where polling shows him very competitive, is evident as he appears to be drawing a considerable following in Iowa to rival Obama and Clinton.”

Kucinich, Biden, Richardson, Dodd, and Gravel all trailed the top three candidates, and did so in that order. Still, with the better part of a year left to go before the election, there’s plenty of time for any person to shake (or muck) things up.

Compete: Republican Candidates Run For Visitors

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:31:12 +0000

When it comes to who’s paying attention to perceived frontrunners Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney among the Republican candidates, the trio receives virtually equal visits to their websites. You’ll never guess who trumps them, and a fourth candidate, easily.

We have fun playing with Compete and its ability to present snapshots of web traffic data that can be compared with each other. Since Doug Caverly looked at Democrats and Google Trends, I thought I’d check out the elephant side of the political circus.

The web traffic for Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney doesn’t look very exciting. Each of the trio tops 108,000 visitors by a small margin for November 2007. Thompson enjoyed a spike upon announcing his candidacy, but has since settled into the pack of web interest.

One might guess John McCain’s traffic would reflect a dropoff in interest as he has suffered from woeful fundraising and the need to make some cutbacks in his campaigning. One would guess correctly, as his visits in November hovered around 92,000.

Add up the monthly traffic for that foursome, and about 420,000 people have expressed interest in their campaigns. Then we have some fun and toss Ron Paul into the mix.

Paul’s site drew over 496,000 in November. His site traffic began to rise from June through September. After that, I’m surprised a Game Over sign didn’t light up on the other candidates’ sites, as about 350,000 visitors arrived at Paul’s site in October, on the way to November’s figure.

How that translates to the real world won’t even be hinted at until the primary season begins in 2008. The Republican machine could be astonished if Paul’s web interest converts into votes, but considering how McCain once challenged George W. Bush before being knocked back, Paul’s campaign may end up being noteworthy for its dynamic online activity.

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Digg Unearths Presidential Candidate Tracking

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:16:45 +0000

Users of Digg can keep an eye on how candidates (or presumably their campaigns) interact with stories appearing on the social media site.

It’s not impossible to be friends with Ron Paul and Barack Obama. For people on Digg, a new feature arrived to enable such disparate friendships to co-exist happily through primary season.

On the Digg the Candidates election site, many of the candidates have agreed to participate on the site. Hillary Clinton is currently a notable exception, especially considering her visits to Silicon Valley, including a trip to Google.

Digg’s Daniel Burka discussed the new page at Digg the Blog:

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Obama Leading All Candidates Online

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:50:28 +0000

Illinois Senator Barack Obama is attracting more visitors to his campaign Web site than any of the other presidential candidates according to the Nielsen Company.

Obama Leading All Candidates Online

Nielsen//NetRatings says, BarackObama.com had the most unique visitors in July, with 717,000. Democrat Hillary Clinton trailed with 437,000 unique visitors, followed John Edwards with 348,000 unique visitors.

Among Republican presidential hopefuls, Fred Thompson’s ImWithFred.com drew the most unique visitors in July, with 381,000 even though at the time he had yet to announce his candidacy. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani ranked No. 2 among Republicans online, with 124,000 unique visitors. Ron Paul followed with 113,000 unique visitors to his Web site and John McCain had 104,000 unique visitors to his campaign Web site.

"Consensus has been that Republicans have been slower to take advantage of the Web in their presidential campaigns, but Fred Thompson may be taking a cue from his Democratic counterparts," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

"Rather than shying away from buzz, the Thompson campaign is actively engaging in an online conversation. Thompson’s online announcement is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s."

According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics BlogPulse, blog buzz around the keyword "Fred Thompson" has been increasing in the days leading up to his announcement to run for president.

On YouTube, Democrats are leading in popularity of their politically-related video content, with 475,000 unique visitors in July, compared to the Republican’s 275,000. Visitors to the Republican videos are staying longer, with an average visit of over 3.5 minutes compared to an average visit of less than 1.5 minutes to the Democratic content.

John McCain continued to lead online advertising among presidential candidates in July, with a total of 7.7 million online ad impressions. Mitt Romney had the No.2 spot with 4.7 million impressions and Dennis Kucinich was third with 820,000 impressions.

Three Candidates Sign On To Google Government

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:57:31 +0000

At first glance it looks like three Presidential candidates swore to uphold a law already passed, but since that wouldn’t make any sense at all, we’ll assume they meant they’ll hold the Executive branch to the same standards the Legislative has already adopted. Given the bobbing and weaving of the current administration, that really would be something.

Three Candidates Sign On To Google Government

The Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, says that candidates Barack Obama, Sam Brownback, and Ron Paul have all agreed that "should they win the presidency in 2008, they will issue an executive order during their first month in office instructing the entire executive branch to put into practice the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, a Google-like search tool will allow you to see how your tax dollars are being spent on federal contracts, grants and earmarks."

The FFATA has a deadline of January 1st, 2008, which means there’s not a lot of time left for the searchable website to come into being. You may also remember from last year, Senators Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd putting a "secret hold" on the legislation, trying to keep it from passing.

Bloggers put a stop to that pretty fast. Stevens, by the way, just had his house in Alaska raided by the feds, in case you might have wondered why he’d be against such a thing.

But anyway, the FFATA has been lauded by fans of a more transparent government, especially in the wake of a government increasingly more clandestine and wasteful, and has been called the first step towards a "Google Government," a phrase that could be both fascinating and chilling.

All three of the aforementioned candidates signed onto extending the FFATA to the executive branch. Critics will believe it when they see it, though, as they’ve accused the present government of dragging their feet on creating it.

That probably means the site will go live at 12:01 a.m. January 1st, and we won’t know who’s been paid and how much to build it until then.

But most interesting is that only those three have committed so far to more transparent governing, perhaps meaning the remaining candidates like things just as murky as unaccountable as they’ve always been, $200 hammers and all.

What I find neat about Reason.org’s presentation is that they’ve provided the text of the oaths taken and candidate signatures. You can judge for yourself which one looks more presidential by comparing them to the signatures that came before them.

(From an amateur graphologist’s standpoint, you might say Obama’s got the winning autograph – egotistic, confident, energetic, optimistic, a visionary’s handwriting; Brownback’s is a bit angular, which could mean extreme rationality, even to the point sadism; Paul’s is friendly, tired, and trailing, almost like a kid that’s about to fall asleep; both Brownback and Paul have open "o’s" and "a’s" which could mean poor secret keeping. Anyway, just guessing and I in no way stand by my own remarks there.)

Hitwise Watches 2008 Candidates

Jordan McCollum — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:48:39 +0000

Hitwise announced yesterday their new Election 2008 Data Center. With only fourteen months to the next election, it’s a darn good thing they started now.

Okay, joking aside, it is a good thing they’ve started now: everyone else seems to have started.

To be updated weekly, the data is based on Hitwise’s 10 million Internet users’ search and Internet behavior. Tessa Court, Hitwise’s CMO, stated:

As the Internet continues to evolve as a major communications channel for candidates and a platform for the public to research issues, we are delighted to share insights on how American Internet users react to political campaigns and policies online as the election unfolds.

Hitwise’s Data Center already features some good information, including the:

Top Presidential Candidate 2008 Websites

Top 10 Presidential Candidate 2008 Search Terms

Top 10 Political Websites

Top 10 Political Search Terms

Fast Moving National Political Websites

If you’re keeping your finger on the pulse of next year’s campaign, keep an eye on Hitwise.

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Analytics: Google Adds PDF, Compete Preps Service

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:57:29 +0000

Google’s established Analytics service becomes more report-friendly with a recent tweak, while Compete readies its Search Analytics product to complement its Site Analytics offering.

It is what you know that can help you, and what you don’t know that can hurt your website.

Google Analytics made it easier to see and distribute what webmasters and site publishers need to know about their traffic. The Google Analytics blog announced the addition of ‘export to PDF’ as a choice for reports.

“These PDF reports are vector based and can scale to the size of billboards and still look beautiful,” wrote Alden DeSoto.

Maybe Lumbergh would approve of those on the TPS reports.

In site analysis, Compete emerged as the new attention getter with its Snapshot feature of websites, which they make freely available. They actively blog about current trends like Republican Presidential candidates and search engine market share.

They should soon launch their Search Analytics product beyond Compete’s current beta audience. Compete touts this service as “the only service that combines webwide site metrics and search analytics in one site to help you quickly master online marketing.”

Search Isn’t Finding Candidate Stands On Issues

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:18:04 +0000

Though it is estimated 42 percent of voters use the Internet to find information about Presidential candidates, those voters are not being served as well as they could be.

Search Isn’t Finding Candidate Stands On Issues

Only television has a broader reach with voters than the Internet, yet the people who would be President have been missing out on both paid and organic search. Voters, particularly the 18-34 demographic that uses the Internet more than newspapers, want more from their candidates.

Research by iCrossing presented in their ‘How America Searches: Election ’08′ report found that candidates have yet to find the best way to present their stand on issues online. People have turned to traditional news sites and social media sites far more often than to the sites run by candidate campaigns.

In particular, iCrossing found that issues matter to voters, but the candidates are not responding. Their research found nearly all candidates ranking poorly for issue-based search visibility, despite trends indicating a desire to find that information.

During May 2007, searchers sought information on a number of issues. The top five were the war in Iraq, gas prices, health care, global warming, and the war on terror. When people search for candidates, the most frequent reason involved finding their stances on issues.

That interest isn’t being rewarded, according to the report:

iCrossing found all key candidates ranking in natural search results for their own names, which is to be expected. The surprise is that very few of the candidates are visible in natural search for issue-based terms or other candidates’ names.

Issue-based content is really the key to a robust natural search engine optimization strategy for 2008 presidential candidates (based on the volume of searches for and interest in political issues), and right now the visibility for candidates on issue-based terms (all referenced in the appendix of this document) is minimal at best.

Out of 126 terms, iCrossing found only two major candidates visible in natural search (each for one term):

• Obama ranked on the 3rd page of MSN for Iraq • Clinton ranked on the 2nd page of MSN for DNC

It’s easy enough to find a candidate by name, as iCrossing noted, and from there get to a website soliciting contributions for those White House hopefuls. Searching for what they might do when they get there, and a lot of voters are searching first, has been less effective than it could be.