As more and more candidates declare their intention to run for president in 2008, more and more Americans will turn to search engines like Google and Yahoo! to find their websites.

So, at a minimum, I expected all 17 of the presumed candidates to have purchased keywords. To my chagrin, only six candidates have taken the plunge. And if you take a closer look, it’s the Republicans who are doing a significantly better job of using search to communicate with the electorate...

The Web on the Candidates

Danny Glover at AirCongress posted a 45-minute video (it's hosted on YouTube; since Google owns it, they made an exception for the 10-minute video length rule) of Hillary Clinton speaking to with Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Google headquarters last week. According to the Mercury News, Clinton first discussed policy issues with Google execs before speaking before a crowd of 200 Google employees. Although Bill Clinton enjoyed high popularity in Silicon Valley, Hillary still needs to work for their support. "She can draw on what Bill Clinton meant to the valley; it's definitely an asset. But I don't think it's immediately or fully transferable," says Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone. [via AirCongress]

Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post takes a look at the battle for netroots support among Democrats and sees that, unlike 2004 when the nascent movement supported Howard Dean, "the support of the netroots is less unified this time around." His three measures of support? The fundraising numbers on Act Blue (John Edwards leads the pack with over $900,000 raised), the DailyKos monthly poll (Edwards is first place with 26; Obama trails at 25 percent), and... techPresident, who provides the MySpace stats (Obama's on top).

The Web on the Candidates

Heather Greenfield of Technology Daily writes about the use of Google Adwords and Google-bombing in political campaigns. Despite search-engine operators' objections, bloggers from the left and right -- people like Chris Bowers of MyDD and John Hawkins of Right Wing News -- have used Google bombing to influence Google's search results.

TechPresident blogger David All has a poll up on his site asking readers, "Which website/service will have the most impact during the 2008 Presidential campaign?" So far, 18 out of 21 voters have chosen YouTube. Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini rightly suggests, however, that we don't yet know what the killer app in 2008 will be: "...the killer app of 2008 hasn’t been invented yet. It will be invented in a garage in August of this year, start gaining critical mass by the end of the fourth quarter, and be on the tip of everyone’s tongue by the middle of next year."

I'm here at the Politics Online conference in Washington, D.C., and I'm listening to Eliot Schrage, Google VP of Global Communications, talk about Google's approach to politics ("we want to make all of the world's information available to everyone. That's political -- knowledge is power") and it's plans for the 2008 election. After running through what YouTube/Google contributes to the political process -- using videos of Hillary Clinton singing out of tune, John Edwards playing with his hair, and a few jokey videos about children running for president -- he said that Google will be setting up a special team to help campaigns use Google products during the 2008 campaign.

The Web on the Candidates -- Politics Online Edition

Jeff Jarvis posts a roundup of one of the first sessions at the Politics Online conference, on putting together a web team. The panel, moderated by former Hotline editor Chuck Todd, featured Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini, former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, myDD's Jerome Armstrong, and Townhall's Chuck DeFeo. Trippi, as usual, was full of useful anecdotes from his Dean days. Jarvis reports one: "[Trippi] recalls a moment in Iowa — a story I’ve heard before — when a student told Dean that he was skipping a final to see the candidate but the candidate switched to dad mode and insisted that the kid go take his test. It made great and authentic video, Trippi says, and he marks it as a significant moment in the campaign online." No current has reached that level authenticity, Trippi says. Check out a video of the panel on Ruffini's site.

The Web on the Candidates -- Daily Digest Lite

Over PrezVid Jeff Jarvis takes a look at what presidential candidates are advertising using Google AdSense, and whose keywords they're advertising with. The most active advertisers are Hillary Clinton -- who's advertising on Obama, Biden, and Dodd searches, and Rudy Giuliani -- who's advertising on McCain, Brownback, Tancredo and the phrase "flat tax." This basically means that when you do a search for, say, McCain or Tancredo, you may see an ad for Giuliani on the right side of the page. Take a closer look at the post for many more interesting results, including the fact that "no one — no candidate, no brand, no news organization, no one — is advertising against “Bush” and “George W. Bush”, even negatively. Nobody wants any of that on them."

At techPresident, we've previously explored how candidate sites are faring in search engine rankings. The placement of search engine results proves to be very important, as research shows that individuals are more likely to pay attention to (and ultimately click through) the top results in a search engine. As it happens, the placement of search results (known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimization) is also a big industry. TP sat down with Neil Patel, the founder of ACS, a firm specializing in SEO and social media marketing. We asked Neil some basic questions about SEO, and why it matters to presidential candidates.

The Web on the Candidates

Last night saw the second Democratic debate, and along with the online commentary came the online polls. The DailyKos poll, with almost 12,000 responses, has John Edwards in first with 27% of the vote and Barack Obama in second with 23%; Hillary Clinton is the only other candidate in the double-digits, with 17%. MyDD's poll got far fewer (166) responses, but the results were similar: Edwards led with 42%, Obama followed with 40%, and Clinton came in third with 19%. No other candidates broke into double-digits. These are the results of the lefty blogosphere; an MSNBC poll that garnered close to 10,000 responses found Obama in the lead in positive categories like "Who stood out from the pack," "Who showed the most leadership qualities," and "Who was the most convincing candidate." Clinton did win two important poll questions: "Who had the most rehearsed answers" and "Who avoided the questions."

The Web on the Candidates

Advertising Age is reporting that a CNN/YouTube co-sponsored debate scheduled for late July will be the first to feature questions in the form of user-generated videos. YouTube users will be asked to upload their questions to YouTube, several of which will be put to the candidates during the July 23 debate. While some skeptics don't see this as an opening up of the debates to the common people -- only internet activists will participate -- it's still a welcome change to the tired TV debate format that is failing to get anyone too excited.

A new Facebook Platform app called Vote on the Book is seeking to simulate "the 2008 Presidential election process, with just one catch-- every vote cast donates money to the candidate's Presidential campaign. It's simple: you vote, we tally the results and divide our earnings out to the candidates by the percentage of vote they have." Sounds like a nifty idea, though there's no explanation of where the donated money is coming from, or how much is donated for every vote...

The Web on the Candidates

Want to ask the Democratic candidates a question? Have the rules of YouTube/CNN debate got you down? Try submitting a question to the Yearly Kos website. The annual netroots conference is soliciting submissions from readers for questions that will be asked of the candidates at a presidential forum (Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson are all slated to attend), but, as Jeffrey Feldman writes, because the organizers can't ask every submitted question, Feldman suggest questioners turn to their communities. "Thinking about submitting a question? Try posting a diary on the subject first, leading a discussion with a group of people interested in your topic, and then working together to generate a few great questions." This approach ensures that "each question we pose will come from individuals, as well as the online communities where we participate in political debate." Maybe YouTube and CNN -- who are restricting the YouTube community's ability to vote for its favorite submitted questions for next week's debate -- could take a cue from this approach.

The Candidates on the Web
Rudy Giuliani is participating in YouTube's Spotlight series this week, and I have no choice but to be honest: it's probably the worst entry in the series thus far. I'm actually wondering if Rudy knows what this whole YouTube whatchamacallit is in the first place. In his video, which resembles a late-night infomercial, complete with cheesy royalty-free music, Rudy outlines the thinking behind his 12 Commitments pledge. "Leadership is all about being willing to express ideas and being willing to tell people the direction in which you believe the country should go... it's part of being honest in politics, it's part of being direct in politics," he says in his usual rapidfire manner. The commitments themselves cover a range of conservative talking points, from "I will keep America on offense [sic] in the Terrorist's War on us" to "I will cut taxes and reform the tax code." So how can we, the voters, participate in this week's Spotlight? Does he want us to send in videos expressing our commitments? Does he want our opinions on his? Sort of. Rudy hurriedly finishes the video with a disengenous-sounding ask to visit his site. "Please contact us at Rudys12Commitments.com. We would love to have your ideas, your thoughts about our 12 Commitments, the things you can see, uh, that we should add to it, the improvements, the cr... whatever you have, just please contact us at Rudys12Commitments.com. Thank you very much," he says quickly. At the site, you can sign a "12 Commitments Pledge," make a contribution, or fill out a form to let the campaign know what you think. Your idea goes straight to the campaign; no other supporter will see it, and it's as removed from YouTube as can be. Sigh.