As candidates cede authority over their web presence to supporters, allowing the posting of voter-generated content to campaign sites, there are bound to be some interesting and unexpected consequences. I decided to explore the presence of voter-generated content on candidate sites and its effect on the site's rank. The results I found are presented below.

Note: Candidates that allow significant voter-generated presence on their sites are bolded.

There are a couple of pieces of information in this chart: (1)First is the Google index of the candidates website - this means how many pages Google had indexed from the site. (2)The second is the candidate's Alexa rank, (3)followed by the candidate's Alexa movement. (4)Finally, we've got data from the 3/23-3/26 Time poll. This data reflects the likelihood of a same-party voter to vote for the candidate in a primary. One should note that this only allows for within-party comparisons, but I'm fine with that at the moment.

The data tells us some interesting things. As I speculated a few weeks ago, Barack Obama is clearly the frontrunning web candidate. His site has nearly double the content of the next closest (John Edwards), and his Alexa ranking is a very impressive 10,432. Of the top four Democratic campaigns (as ranked by Alexa), three of them significantly embrace voter-generated content. This is truly a shot across the bow of the other Democratic candidates and they navigate their web presence. Our outlier, Hillary Clinton, makes up in name recognition what she lacks in voter-generated presence - her Alexa rank is a laudable 16,567. While voter-generated presence seems to be helping out a number of democratic candidates, it is clear that it is not the only factor at play.

On the Republican side, only one candidate has significantly embraced voter-generated content - John McCain. As profiled extensively on TechPresident, McCain's efforts have taken off after a faltering start. Even with this voter-generated presence, McCain's net efforts still trail Giuliani and Romney. Overall, it doesn't look like voter-generated content will find much of a home at the Republican candidate sites - though we're still very early in the game, and many candidates are still working off their exploratory shell websites.

The caucus poll numbers are included as a sanity check on the rankings. To win on the internet means only so much; an enhanced internet presence clearly can assist in name recognition, messaging and fund-raising, but it doesn't necessarily mean votes. Clearly, winning the internet race is only one part of the overall equation. I've got my eyes on Mr. Obama, however. He seems to be uniquely and capably leveraging his internet presence for the benefit of his campaign.

Final notes: A "significant voter-generated presence" generally means that candidates are allowing voters to maintain interactive presences on their websites. This list does not include sites that simply post voter-generated content (for example, guest posts on the Hillary Clinton blog). With regards to Chris Dodd's web presence, I did find a number of bloggers operating there, but I couldn't find a way to join this community. I'll happily reverse my distinction if it turns out his site allows a significant voter-generated presence.