WebProNews

The campaign for Presidential nominations began in earnest today with the first primary being held in Iowa. The major search engines have resources of interest for the politically inclined surfer to visit.

We imagine the various political bloggers and webmasters must be in ecstasy today, now that the state of Iowa has its primary underway. To complement those fevered bloggers, we took a look at some of the resources available at the major search sites about the primary.

At Ask.com, a search for the Iowa primary brings up a Smart Answer block atop the search results. They link to the state of Iowa's list of sites about the primary; the left sidebar of the Ask results features options for narrowing the search.

Google occupies the other end of the spectrum. They have been a fixture thanks to their presence in the YouTube debates held in 2007. Tonight, a Google Maps mashup will show live results of today's voting in Iowa.

Yahoo goes farther with its election coverage than Google and its News section for the election. At Yahoo, features like their Election '08 Political Dashboard offer a unique look at the various campaigns.

AOL Elections '08, like many other AOL services, mimics the style and look of Yahoo. AOL's site isn't as gee-whizzy as Yahoo's, as they have more of a focus on stories and headlines about the election. They will track primary results, and show them on the main elections page.

At Microsoft, their MSN Election page covers what they have to offer voters. MSNBC News figures prominently, with a lead story on how various outcomes would affect eleven of the candidates (Ron Paul didn't merit a mention in MSNBC political director Chuck Todd's piece, though.)

MSN's continued connection with Slate.com, once a Microsoft property, brings in several stories from that publication. Latino MSN Elecciones 2008 serves the Spanish-language community seeking online election information.