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

Slate is reporting that former New York City mayor and Republican Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, Caroline, just quit the Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) group on Facebook, but only after Slate contacted her to ask what was up.

And, surprise, she’s not talking to them about it.

A soon-to-be Harvard student, Caroline failed to mark her profile private, and the sleuths at Slate found her out. That’s too bad for her, and a bit embarrassing for Rudy. She tried to hide it at the last minute, but Slate caught a screen cap denoting her withdrawal from the Barack fan club.

This isn’t the first time a child’s social network profile has made a politician’s face red. Wonkette has a running tally of all the social networking mishaps, including the latest on one of the Bush twins and Jeb Bush, Jr. doing some interesting things with a champagne bottle. 

In case you missed it, Venezuelan RCTV is broadcasting on YouTube after being booted by the government – a testament to the sheer necessity of a site like YouTube for the democratic process. It’s hard to spin when cold hard evidence is readily present and can be uploaded from anywhere.

United States Presidential hopeful and former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani received a rather interestingly timed smiting, perhaps from the Almighty himself last night. Just as he was about to address his Pro-Choice stance and respond to Catholic criticism that he was a Pontius Pilate, lightning struck and cut off his mic.

But something else was going on among the press corps, according to bloggers. A YouTube video has surfaced showing InfoWars.com’s Matt Lepacek, who claimed to have proper press credentials at CNN’s Republican debate, being arrested at the command of Giuliani’s press secretary after asking a question.

Never mind the question itself. It was a rather audacious query about Giuliani’s knowledge of a terrorist threat prior to 9/11. And that’s something we’d rather not get into here.

But Lepacek’s arrest brings up some serious questions about freedom of the press, especially since Lepacek is being held on charges of criminal trespassing and espionage.

Yes, espionage. Apparently webcams at debates count for that.

Luckily for those wondering what they’re not seeing in the mainstream press, there is citizen journalism in the world today, where digital cameras are ever-present. YouTube is making an impact – a big one.

Hopefully, the big boys in traditional media will jump on this atrocity as an apparently innocent man is sitting in jail on trumped on charges by the New Hampshire police acting on the command of a press secretary.