In only 19 days since its launch, I am pleased to announce that Searching for John McCain (About the campaign; How to maximize your participation in the campaign, Campaign Widget) is making significant headway. Of the eighteen keyword and article combinations we are targeting, thirteen of the eighteen are now in the top fifty, and fifteen of the eighteen are rising in the rankings. Here is a progress report for all nine articles and two keyword searches, compared to where each ranked eleven days ago:
1--John McCain Votes to Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike. Up 8 slots to 42nd on "John McCain", down 8 slots to 45th on "McCain"
2--McCain housing policy shaped by lobbyist: Down 8 slots to 55th on John McCain", down 12 slots to 58th on "McCain"
Note: While this story is struggling right now, only last week it has temporarily moved into the top twenty on searches for John McCain. I will look into why it is falling in the rankings now, but the past success does indicate that it has the potential to come back with real force.
3--Bush, McCain plug Social Security: Up to 47th from outside the top 100 on John McCain; up to 31st from outside the top 100 on McCain
4--McCain blasts Obama's and Clinton's attacks on NAFTA: Up 7 slots to 58th on "John McCain," up to 40th from outside the top 100 for "McCain"
5--McCain in NH: Would Be "Fine" To Keep Troops in Iraq for "A Hundred Years": Up 1 slot to 21st on "John McCain ", Up 17 slots to 57th on "McCain"
6--McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion: Up 36 slots to 38th on "John McCain" up to 88th from outside the top 100 for "McCain."
7--Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition: Up 16 slots to 35th on "John McCain," up to 35th from outside the top 100 for "McCain."
8--McCain says overturn the law that legalized abortion: Up 18 slots to 31st on "John McCain", up to 39th from outside the top 100 for "McCain."
9--McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy: Up 3 slots to 26th on "John McCain"; Up 1 slot to 21st on "McCain."
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Overall, in more than half of all the targeted searches, progress has been substantial, with the articles jumping ten or more slots. The goal of the campaign is to place, by Labor Day, three of these articles in the top ten searches for both John McCain and McCain, three in the second ten, and three in the third ten. Here is where the campaign currently stands:
This is substantial progress, given that only three weeks ago virtually none of these articles were in the top 100 for either Google keyword search. With eleven weeks to go in the campaign, I remain extremely confident that we will achieve all of our goals, and make 15 million voter contacts as a result.
So, lets keep hitting this as hard as we can. To learn more about the campaign, click here. To learn how to maximize your participation in the campaign, click here. For a cool widget that helps you participate in the campaign, click here.
We appear to be entering a silly season in the presidential election, if this Telegraph article is anything to go by.
Nevertheless, there are two important points in here.
One is that Republicans are picking a VP. This is particularly important since McCain may very well not last two terms and the GOP tends to base its primaries on the theory of "The Turn", so McCain's VP is likely to become the de facto head of the Republican Party within the next eight years.
The other was mentioned by McCain. For all that the joke was bad, he was right about one thing:
"What you can find out now on the internet - it's remarkable."
John McCain won't be using Google to pick his VP. One imagines the internet both confuses and appalls him and he has a team of researchers and advisors to dig up the dirt on potential running mates and help him make the choices.
But swing voters don't have these resources. If they want to know about VP candidates, they'll have to turn to potted summaries on TV or in newspapers and to the internet.
I have some good news for you this afternoon. Only one week into the Searching for John McCain campaign, we have already placed five articles into the top fifty searches on either John McCain or McCain. For one week, I think that it pretty darn impressive. We have a foothold, and it is only upward from there on out.
More information, including detailed progress reports, campaign goals, tips to make your participation in Searching for John McCain more effective, and information for new participants can be found in the extended entry.
Searching for John McCain is a massive, online activism campaign designed to make at least ten million non-partisan, poll-tested, on-message voter contacts that reveal the damning truth about John McCain entirely through mainstream news reports and McCain's own words. Through mass blogger participation and the use of embedded hyperlinks, Searching for John McCain will connect millions of curious, low-information swing voters to negative, mainstream news articles about John McCain without 99% of those voters even knowing that Searching for John McCain exists. It is the more sophisticated, and hopefully more effective, 2.0 version of the Googlebomb the Elections campaign which, with only $1,500 and three days of work, reached 6% of the electorate in 47 swing congressional districts during the final two weeks of the 2006 mid-term elections.
You can participate if you have a website of your own, if you make comments on other websites, or even if you are a registered user on a community website. It is quick. It is easy. It is free. And it is very, very effective. If it is done correctly, and if enough people participate, this campaign alone should cost John McCain 1% of the vote in November.
To learn how to participate, and to learn how it will work, read on into the extended entry.
Even thought he primary campaign will continue for at least another three weeks, and probably another two months, the time has come to start seriously working on defeating John McCain in the general election. As part of that effort, one of my main campaigns this cycle will be to reprise the 2006 search engine optimization campaign, Googlebomb the Elections, in an expanded, long-lasting, and more thoroughgoing fashion against John McCain. From now through the November elections, I will have at least two articles a week on this campaign
The premise of the campaign is simple. The most common political action Americans take online is to look for information on candidates, and so directing them toward negative, trustworthy information on John McCain during those searches will be worth millions, even tens of millions, of effective voter contacts. Due to Google's search ranking algorithm, and because many of us have our own websites, this is a form of direct, electoral action that bloggers are uniquely positioned to carry out through the widespread use of identical embedded hyperlinks.
Today, I would like to open the soft relaunch of the campaign with an eye on which McCain related YouTube videos we would most like voters to see. Already, YouTube is the fifth result for Google searches on "McCain", and the fourth result for searches on "John McCain". This extremely high search engine ranking for YouTube on the most common searches on McCain makes optimizing the best McCain related videos essential to this SEO (Googlebomb) campaign. Already the two videos that appear on these searches have 1.6M and 550,000 views respectively. Here they are:
The first video is an Obama supporter video that satirically mocks McCain for his position on endless Iraq occupation. The second is a video from Brave New Films that focuses on McCain's double-speak on easy victory in Iraq, pandering to the religious right, the South Carolina state flag, and gay marriage. Both have pretty high production values, and use humor to attack two of McCain's perceived strengths: Iraq and "straight-talk." Really, not too bad at all.
Still, there is reason to think that there might be better videos out there to optimize on Google, especially considering the extremely prominent position these two videos currently hold on searches for McCain. For one thing, neither video comes from a source that many people have heard of or would consider "objective." Second, neither video mentions McCain's ties to lobbyists, which should be an important message point this campaign cycle. Third, attacking McCain for flip-flopping on gay marriage and the South Carolina flag feels, well, really 2004 and 2000 respectively. Hard to imagine that either issue is forefront in the minds of voters these days. When the country is collapsing around us, those issues feel kind of trite. Finally, neither of the Google result for either video clearly identify themselves as being informative about McCain, making people less likely to click through to watch the video.
So, what I am asking is, with the literally hundreds of YouTube videos out there on McCain, are these the two we want to be the most prominent on Google searches? During the seven months between now and the general election, literally millions of people will see Google search results on McCain that will include two links to YouTube videos. Is this the best we can do? They aren't bad, but I am strongly inclined to look around for some others. So, today, I am asking you to sift through YouTube, and find other videos that you would like voters looking for info on McCain to watch. If you have any ideas, please send me an email or post them in the comments.
