Experian Hitwise Director of Research Heather Doughtery wrote about the Facebook traffic for the presidential candidates this election season and found some encouraging news – if Facebook has anything to say about it – for one Willard Romney and company, at least insofar securing the Republican nomination. The traffic data only leads up to January 21, which was the date of the South Carolina primary so it’s anybody’s guess as to whether I’ll be announcing that Newt “The Gravedigger” Gingrich is the new President of Facebook after Florida’s primary next week.

Regardless, this is where we are now: Romney’s killing it on Facebook. Not only is his official Facebook page getting 1.7x more visits than Ron Paul’s fan page, his closest Republican/Facebook competitor, Romney’s page is netting 2.5x more visitors than Obama’s page. I know the line graph below is a little hard to see, but that red line that’s leaps and bounds ahead of every other line you see? Red is for Romney, and everybody else basically in the gutter looking up at his Facebook star.

If you’re Mitt Romney’s campaign staff and you believe that Facebook is in any way a valid reflection of people’s Real Life behavior and interests, here’s some news to send you to sleep with a smile: people making less than $30,000 are visiting your Facebook page a lot, and people in Ohio are visiting your Facebook page a lot. Why should this make Mitts happy? Because being poor and living in Ohio are two characteristics of the ever-important swing voters who would help decide a general election should Romney obtain the nomination and face Obama.

31.8% of visitors to Romney’s Facebook page in the last four weeks were reported to earn less than $30,000. Furthermore, visitors from Ohio had the highest share of visits in the last four weeks (Utah was closely behind Ohio in shares of visits but that’s Mormon country – Romney’s bread and butter – so that’s not surprising). Whether people just wanna get close with the enemy or are genuinely interested in learning about Romney, he’s pulling in some Facebook interest.

As Dougherty concluded, this is good Facebook news for Romney because it suggests that “social efforts are gaining attention and building an audience on Facebook.” This has been a crazy primary thus far, though, and who knows what the results of the South Carolina primary have done to this race. Also, keep in mind: this is not madness, this is Facebook; where people go when they need to post creepy pictures of their ultrasounds and share the latest frog/wolf/Asian father meme to their dubious friends. And since the third (more?) act of the Newtation is apparently really happening, so we’ll see how everybody’s settled on Facebook after the Florida primary.

But, the Republicans aren’t Facebook official with their Romney relationship status yet and so we’re still supposed to play along as if we still believe in Santa Claus. Contributing to the charade that this weekend’s primary is meaningful, social media scientist (can you actually major in that now?) Dan Zarrella took a look at the Twitter activity regarding the final four candidates – Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich – to see how each of them are doing among the crucial Twitter constituency. Using the multiple metrics examined by Zarrella, let’s score how each candidate did and just get this primary election over with:

Most followers: Gingrich.
Average number of Retweets: Paul.
Retweets-per-follower: Paul.
Reply percentage: Gingrich.
Link percentage: Paul.
Mentions per hour: Romney.
Followers per mention: Romney.

Final Score: Santorum, 0; Gingrich, 2; Romney, 2; Paul, 3.

Ron Paul wins! He’s the next President of the United States of Twitter! Come on down! Although, Paul’s had a pretty good relationship with the Twitterscape as the primaries have lurched to inevitabile Romney-vision.

(Oh, and as a conciliatory note, in case people on Twitter weren’t aware, there’s a guy named Rick Santorum running for president, too.)

If only everything were that easy, right? Right. Unfortunately, this is the real world where we still have to grunt and sweat under a weary life of real elections, so take a look at the full infographic to actually understand what’s happening on Twitter with the Drab Four.

Due to the breakneck recycle speed of the political news cycle, trying to stay informed on what’s happening in the world of politics can be nauseating. You’re probably always going to be me missing something somewhere. However aggregating your own collection of news sources doesn’t have to be so stupefying since Google has made it a little easier for voters and otherwise interested parties to attempt to stay abreast of the latest news concerning topics, candidates, and election results. Google Politics & Elections, a new wing of the Google News service, collects articles covering breaking stories related to politics in the United States. With the service, readers can isolate topics to certain candidates (right now it’s a bunch of Republican primary candidates and the current POTUS, Barack Obama) as well as issues related to categories like the economy, social issues, and healthcare. From the post on Google’s official blog:

The site enables voters, journalists and campaigns to quickly sort through election info by popularity, race or issues. People can also check out the Trends Dashboard to take the web’s real-time political pulse by comparing candidates’ YouTube video views, search traffic and Google News mentions. Campaign staffers, advocates and everyday citizens can utilize our tools and features to reach, engage and inspire voters.

What might be most interesting for anyone who makes a hobby out of political speculation there is a function on the Politics & Elections homepage where you can track trends related to each specific candidate. For instance, given the latest surge of Rick Santorum out of the bowels of obscurity and into a legitimate third place (the fact that third place is now a consummation devoutly to be wished is kind of absurd, really), readers can actually see the rise in Google News Mentions of Santorum in the past week. It’s a fun tool as an observer, but given how tumultuous this primary cycle has been for all Republican candidates I wouldn’t recommend placing any bets on the reliability of any search trends as proof of sustainable electability.

The Google Politics & Elections also employs the Hangouts tools for journalists who are personally covering the election, perhaps as an effort to promote sodality and collaboration but I anticipate it will most likely be used as an online watering hole where everybody commiserates and decompresses. You can add the Politics & Elections tool to your Google+ account, as well, if you’re interested in participating or watching any of the activity in the Hangouts. Additionally, you can follow news stories as they develop by adding this group to your Circles. The news service will also cover international politics as well as the home-grown brews but given that we are officially in the election year, expect most of the news to be dominated by the election of the next POTUS.

Since today kicks off the election of the Republican primaries with the Iowa caucus, following these services might be a good idea if any of you are hoping to stay informed as the results start to come in about which candidate will claim victory in Iowa this evening.

As you may know, Republican candidate Herman Cain announced that he’s suspending his bid for the the presidential nomination. As you might imagine, Twitter is aflutter with everyone weighing in. While I wouldn’t dare attempt to capture all that is being said (with so many tweets rolling in every second, it would be impossible), it’s always fun to pull out a sample of the public’s reaction.

So here’s a sample.

Cain is quoted as saying:

As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign…

I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused on me and my family. Not because we are not fighters.

This announcement announcement is not the first we’ve seen so far as the cycle of republican presidential hopefuls gear up for primary season. Earlier, former Minnesota governor and hopeful Tim Pawlenty tweeted a link to an announcement he was making live on Facebook, which turned out to be the development of an exploratory committee on running for President. He has since thrown his hat in the ring officially.

Newt GingrichI have been humbled by all the encouragement you have given me to run. Thank you for your support. Be sure to watch Hannity this Wednesday at 9pm ET/8pm CT. I will be on to talk about my run for President of the United States. 1 day ago · 1,251 likes · 346 comments

Mitt Romney, who is seen as the likely frontrunner early on in the primary race also kicked things off through social media. Back in April he announced his own exploratory committee for President on Twitter and also put out a short message on YouTube.

Is it possible that whichever hopeful best utilizes social media will be the one to emerge victorious in the Republican primary? The Republican party should be praying that the most social media friendly candidate is the one that moves on to face President Obama in the national election. We all remember how well Barack Obama used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to win his 2010 campaign. Just ask John McCain who, though active on Facebook and Twitter, looked like a Luddite in comparison to Obama’s media blitz.

And Obama is still incredibly active on the social media sites, posting daily to his millions of followers. There is strong evidence to suggest that social media will heavily influence the outcome of the 2014 race.

So that got me to thinking – how do the primary hopefuls stack up in terms of social media presence? I looked at Facebook statistics and used two different applications for determining Twitter influence (Klout and Twitalyzer). Klout factors in Facebook likes and comments into some of their ratings.

Since Newt is in the news for just recently beginning to announce, let’s start with him.

Newt has just shy of 126,000 likes on his official Facebook page. The page is active, meaning it has regular postings, photos and event notifications. The most recent 5 posts from Newt have an average of 846 likes and 144 comments.

On Twitter, Newt has 1.3 million followers. He is also fairly active on the service, tweeting almost once a day. His total Klout score is 67. According to Klout, his true reach (number of actually engaged followers) is 507K. His amplification probability (likelihood that content will be acted upon – retweets and such) is 48 and his network influence score (how influential is their engaged audience) is 71.

According to Twitalyzer, Newt’s impact score is 27.9% which puts him in the 99.1 percentile. Not bad.

Let’s look at some of the other candidates thought to be frontrunners in the primary race.

Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, has 883,000 likes on his Facebook page. It is also an active page, posting almost every day – sometimes twice a day. His most recent 5 posts average 4532 likes and 397 comments, dwarfing Gingrich.

Romney only has 40,000 followers on Twitter. His Twitalyzer impact score is 27.5%, which puts him in the 99th percentile. His total Klout score is 71, higher than Newts, most likely because it incorporates Facebook to some degree. His true reach on Twitter is 16K with an amplification score of 54 and a network influence score of 76.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has 583,000 likes on his Facebook page. His last 5 posts average 1148 likes and 230 comments.

His Twitalyzer impact score is 29.3% and his Klout score is 68 – with a true reach of 54k, and amplification score of 49 and a network influence score of 72.

Former Alaska Governor and TLC reality star Sarah Palin is like the celebrity of the party if you go by her social media prowess. She has just shy of 3 million likes on his Facebook page, with her last 5 comments averaging 19453 likes and 1983 comments. These numbers dwarf those of any other Republican who has been implicated in the 2014 race.

Palin has 513,000 twitter followers and her Twitalyzer impact score is 59.5%, putting her in the 99.8 percentile. Her Klout score is 78 with a true reach of 180K, an amplification score of 67 and a network influence score of 82.

Finally, Tim Pawlenty is the mainstream candidate with the least impressive numbers. He only has 86,000 likes on his Facebook page and is averaging 291 likes and 48 comments on his last 5 posts.

Pawlenty has 32,000 followers on Twitter and an impact score of 16.5 %. His Klout score is 67 with a 12K true reach, and amplification score of 48 and a network influence score of 72.

Out of these 5 candidates, Sarah Palin is clearly the social media star. But she has yet to actually announce her candidacy. It is just highly speculated by pundits and insiders that she is thinking about running. Of the candidates who we know are running, Mitt Romney looks like he utilizes social media better than the rest. He is a force on Facebook, garnering massive feedback when he posts. He could stand to expand his Twitter influence, however, by tweeting more frequently and engaging with his audience through replies and retweets.

People seem to respond to politicians who engage with them through social media.  There is a sense of authenticity and truth that springs from direct messages from the leaders.  Instead of speaking through a spokesman or press release, politicians can (at least feign) real involvement with the people through Facebook and Twitter.  So, in order to compete with the social savvy President in 2014, the GOP is going to have to engage with people on the interwebs with a vigor to match.

The site called dontgomovement.com was created to support House Republicans who remained in Congress Friday after it adjourned for its August recess. The Republicans are protesting Congress’ failure to vote on an energy bill.

"They provided the spark but we were the energy that was already out there," Patrick Ruffini, a founding editor of the conservative Web site thenextright.com, said on a conference call.

Over 1100 people have signed up to receive email alerts from the site since a splash page went up on Monday, according to Eric Odom, one of the organizers behind dontgomovement.com.

The site says its goal is "to achieve a tidal shift in American politics from the ground up." It says it will do that by using new media and grassroots to "link the people of America with their elected representatives from both sides of the aisle."

The site says it "will provide the technology to send letters to members of Congress, make phone calls to them, and provide up to date news, and blogging content. #dontgo is a message to all of America, Republicans, Democrats and Independents."
 

Conveniently the same top 3 candidates in both parties are both considered the top 3 candidates, so I’m going to stick with the same in my new analysis (Democrats: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

Republicans: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain). In my previous post I looked at a few points that haven’t changed, like age of domain and the choice of domain URL, so refer to that post for that analysis.

This analysis looks at basic SEO metrics and compares data from January 2008 to March 2007. A few new measurements are given following these, including PPC branding and a new metric called IndexRank. And for fun we’ll come up with the winners from both parties in terms of their effectiveness in SEO.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site.

These figures are from Yahoo.

Barack Obama leads in backlinks by about 150,000 backlinks. John Edwards started with having almost 6 times less than Hillary and beats her by 80,000 backlinks.

In the Republican field, John McCain started off with very few (comparatively) backlinks and still ends with 100,000 less than Mitt Romney. Romney leads Rudy by about 50,000 links.

Technorati Links

This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.

Obama again leads on Technorati links and John Edwards and Clinton keep their same position, with Hillary having the most percentage increase.
Mitt Romney started well ahead of both Rudy and John (2.5 X more and 5 X more respectively) and still leads in Technorati links. Rudy surpasses John McCain with a larger increase in links.

Alexa Rank

I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.

All of the Democratic candidates have seen a drop in their Alexa Rank since March 2007, with John Edwards taking the worst drop. Barack Obama leads with the best rank.

All of the Republican candidates see a better Alexa ranking, although anything was better than Rudy’s rank in March 2007. Mitt Romney leads with the best rank.

Page Strength

All candidates made significant strides, as would be expected. PageStrength is not a measurement of how good the pages are, but of how well-known, cited, visited, and linked to a site is.

John Edwards has the highest PageStrength while Barack jumped the most, moving from third to second.
John McCain made the most stride but also started as the lowest in PageStrength. Both McCain and Romney end up with the same PageStrength, both beating out Hillary’s PageStrength.

Indexed Pages

Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.

These numbers are all over the place, it’s hard to say who reports more accurately (Google vs. Yahoo). However, there’s no doubt that Obama has created tons of content (probably a lot of user-generated content).

PPC Branding

I’m not going to recap the PPC from March 2007 because the keywords I looked at were only used by 2 of the candidates. This time I chose to look at the use of PPC for their own name, which I feel is a reflection of their PPC campaign. If you’re not running ads for your brand (your name) you’re probably not running much of a PPC campaign.

Barack Obama – Ads by Obama and Rudy
Hillary Clinton – Ad by Rudy
John Edwards – Ad by Rudy
Rudy Giuliani – Ad by Rudy
Mitt Romney – Ads by Rudy and Mike Huckabee
John McCain – Ads by McCain and Rudy

Rudy clearly comes out a winner, but keep in mind this is only a snapshot. If you follow these links at different times of day and different geographical locations you may see very different results. These are coming from the West Coast.

IndexRank – a measurement of content freshness

This metric is from 0-10 where 10 is the highest. The higher the number the better the content growth, freshness, and the more indexed the site is by Google.

Hillary Clinton – 8
Barack Obama – 8
John Edwards – 5
Mitt Romney – 9
John McCain – 8
Rudy Giuliani – 6

Mitt Romney wins out with a 9 above even the Democrats. Hillary and Obama are both at 8 and John Edwards lags way behind the whole group with a 5. Rudy lags behind the Republican candidates with a 6.

The Winners

Back in March 2007 there was no clear SEO winner in either party. After 10 months of campaigning, you can really see a lot of changes in all the candidates, some more than others.

In the Democratic party, Barack Obama clearly trumps both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the growth of their site and the pursuit in SEO.

In the Republican party, its not as clear but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have made great strides, but I think Mitt Romney’s advantage in traffic, IndexRank, and Technorati links gives him an edge over Giuliani.

Comments

When it comes to the type of political videos watched, 27 percent have viewed a news story about a campaign or candidate online, while 14 percent have watched a candidate interview and the same number a political speech. Only 11 percent watched a political advertisement and 10 percent a campaign video.

Breaking it down by party, Democrats are more likely than Republicans or Independents (40% versus 35% and 33%) to have watched a political video online. Democrats are more likely to have watched each of the types of political videos than Republicans.

More than half (56%) who have watched a political video say they did so to help decide which candidates to support, 50 percent have watched videos for candidates they already support and 35 percent have watched videos for candidates they knew they would not support. Democrats are more likely then Republicans to watch videos to help them decide who to support (59% versus 46%). Republicans are more likely to watch videos for candidates they knew they would not support (39% versus 31%).

Just 7 percent say they would watch a lot more of political speeches if more were available on the Internet, while 17 percent say they would watch a little more. Thirty-six percent would not watch more political speeches if more were available online. Even fewer would watch campaign ads if there were more online. Forty-one percent would not watch anymore while four percent would watch a lot more campaign ads and 10 percent a little more.

The poll concludes, "While YouTube may be taking over the Internet, it looks like campaign themed videos may not yet be ‘must see’ viewing. Campaigns probably don’t want to avoid going online, but they should ensure that they do not focus online on this medium – as a struggling campaign with insufficient funds may be wont to do."