What’s in a Keyword: How the Presidential Campaigns Use Search

You may have missed it if you weren’t looking for the term "Joe the Plumber" in search lately, but I found an interesting thing in the search results pages.  I noticed that the John McCain campaign was on their game purchasing these terms and others quickly so they appear at the top of the search engines when people searched them. 

The same was true for a little slip of the tonge by McCain in the last debate. At one point during the debate, McCain accidently referred to Senator Obama as "Senator Government." It took the McCain search staff no more than one day to put that term into search so it was front and center, at least in Google anyway. Upon closer examination, however, you will find an interesting microcosm for the campaigns in terms of how they use search – which can tip their hand on how they plan to approach their communications strategy in the days ahead.

 
Today, just 2 weeks before the election, I found the following titles appearing in ads by the McCain campaign, no matter what financial keyword I searched for: 

• Wealth distribution?
• I Am Joe the Plumber
• Joe the Plumber’s Concern
• Joe the Plumber videos
• Are you a Joe the Plumber?

Interesting or not, the term "wealth distribution" was outnumber by "Joe the Plumber" headlines by a 10-to-1 ratio in an unofficial Mark Grote search engine test.  Both campaigns are largely focused on Google. McCain seems to be targeting more terms, while Barack Obama is focused on his name. In fact, Obama appears to be buying only his name and some select keywords connected to his name (Barack Obama Tax Plan) in exact match on all search engines and nothing else.

 

SEARCH CAMPAIGN NOTES:

 

GOOGLE:

• John McCain is buying "tax cuts" and shows his default ad, "John McCain in 2008." The default title for Obama is "Official Obama Website"
• Obama is in exact match for his name and a few other select keywords
• McCain is buying his name in broad match and also targeting Obama’s name in exact match 
• Because McCain is in exact match for Obama’s name, it’s no accident that his ad appears for a search of Barack "Hussein" Obama
• Equally no accident, and perhaps more curious than the above is what’s missing: Barack Obama’s website on searches for "Barack Hussein Obama." Obviously intentional, the Obama team thinks it’s a big negative to use Barack’s middle name and has the term in negative match. Why would they do that?
• BIG mistake by the McCain campaigns not to be in negative match for some John McCain searches. I queried "John McCain Lied" and behold, a John McCain ad appears in Google. Probably not the best strategy or use of money. I tried the same thing for Obama and could not find an ad. Obviously, Obama’s team is using negative match a bit better or more restrictively than the McCain camp does.

YAHOO:

• Obama is not in broad match – a seach for Obama tax cuts brought up nothing in Yahoo. It can’t be because of money. Obama has plenty to satisfy the demand for Search if he can afford advertising in video games
• Obama keeps things tightly associated to his and Biden’s name on Yahoo staying in phrase match
• McCain is only buying his name and Palin’s name on Yahoo. No Joe the Plumber campaign messages here. Oddly enough, for all the work the team is doing on Google, you would think they would at least keep these few "Joe" keywords up on Yahoo and Live.com. Nope!

LIVE:

• McCain is buying on Live.com but only broad match "Palin" related kewords. Even "John McCain" broad match queries only brought up a GOP party website in the paid SERPs. I wonder if this has to do with the funds that John McCain has. Because he accepted public financing, he cannot fundraise any more, but the GOP can. Just a thought.
• A search for Obama Tax Cuts in Live showed the result "Official Obama Website" for one of his ads. Interesting that the Obama camp is not focused or using dynamic keyword insertion at all.

GENERAL SEARCH STRATEGY:

• In all three of the search engines we find the Obama strategy is to avoid the use of John McCain or Sarah Palin keywords while the opposite is true for McCain/Palin campaign.
• John McCain and Barack Obama stay clear of Bill Ayers and Jerimieh Wright in search. Both appear to be using those keywords in negative matches.

At this point so close to the election, both campaigns seem to have simplified their search strategy. The Obama campaign is only focused on the juggernaut of keywords in its campaign, and that’s its brand "Barack Obama". Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is definatley showing how it plans to go after Barack Obama, at least for now, and that is by exploiting the Joe the Plumber incident as much as possible. At the same time, McCain has a juggernaut brand of its own in Palin who is more searched than any of the four candidates. 

As of today the startegy might be working. With the exception of a few outliers, McCain has cut into Obama’s lead in the polls by about 3% in the last week and is close to being within the margin of error in several other polls.