Ever wonder how well the presidential candidates are doing not only in the national polls, but also in search engine results? Why not, with the upcoming election close election and the recent study by Nielsen/NetRatings reporting that 1 in 3 Americans (or 110 million of them) use search engines in their daily lives, search engines may play a very important role in many electorial decisions.
A new website which uses Google to help determine how well Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are doing in certain Google keyword searches. Google Race is not affiliated with Google, but uses the Google search engine API to rank candidates based on their association with particular keywords. Google Race measures each candidate’s total web presence, for example, the total results for a search on “John Kerry.” When a user runs a specific search like, “taxes” the Google Race engine searches google for the term “John Kerry” + “taxes”, and divides the results by the candidate’s total web presence results. This formula shows the perception of the character of candidates.
The site is still in primary mode, showing candidates such as Sharpton and Dean, but still is an interesting look on how such candidates rank and is based on current Google indexing.
Running some tests on Google Race, let’s rank results:
Liar :
George W. Bush beats out John Kerry in this Google query, meaning there are more sites indexed in Google which associate President Bush with the search term “liar” than do for John Kerry.
Sexy:
For some odd reason, the sexiness of a candidate seems to come up in almost every Presidential election. Using Google Race for a search for “sexy,” the top result is for the Reverend Al Sharpton- can’t argue with that one! However, of the top Presidential candidates, George W. Bush is ranked sexier than John Kerry.
In time, the Google Race will probably heat up between Kerry and Bush and these results are bound to change. The Search Engine Journal found some other interesting results, and if you find anything worth posting, please leave a comment below.
