Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

I read an interesting post this morning on Search Engine News Journal talking about search activity related to the two presidential candidates. This post refers to a press release by a search marketing company that did some research into the issue of keyword popularity and search marketing among presidential candidates.

Top findings include the following:

• Searches on the key phrase “John Kerry” outnumber searches done on the key phrase “George Bush” by a 4-to-1 margin. If you also account for those searching on key phrase “George W. Bush,” “John Kerry” is ahead by a 2-to-1 ratio.
  
• Internet searchterms “Republican Party” and “Democratic Party” are even, but searchterm “RNC” shows up one-and-a-half more times than searchterm “DNC.”
  
• The key phrase “homeland security” produces twice as many Internet searches as the searchterms “gun control” or “poverty.”
  
• The searchterm “war in Iraq,” generates twice as many Internet searches as the key phrases “civil rights” or “health care.”
  
• In looking at search engine placement, neither of the official presidential campaign sites was among Google’s first page results when searching upon the key phrase “homeland security.” Johnkerry.com could be found on the second page, ranking 16th. Georgewbush.com could be found on the fourth page, ranking 41st.
  

I think it's always intersesting to look at differences in keyword searches for various topics related to politics, current events, etc. I'm not sure why it matters that neither candidate's site doesn't show up for homeland security. The sites that should show up for that term are showing up right at the top. Like any press release, you have to take it in context of who's writing it. Coming from a SEO company, it makes sense that they would make the point that the candidates' sites could show up higher for various "related" keywords if they had sites/content that were properly optimized. However, I don't think people have any difficulty finding the official website of each candidate or any opposing views they may want to explore. That's the beauty of "natural" search, it provides the correct results naturally, as a result of relevant content and links pointing to that content.