Google Blasting
Jun 12th, 2009 | 5 responses
I had never heard the term before the WaPo’s Jose Antonio Vargas credited it with swinging the Virginia Democratic primary for governor in favor of Creigh Deeds:
Starting at 3 p.m EST Monday, hours before polls opened across Virginia, Deeds’s campaign bought what’s called a “Google blast.” Or, more appropriately, a Google attack. If you live in Northern Virginia (or, like many voters, work in D.C. but live in NoVa), Deeds has been almost inescapable on highly-trafficked sites such as washingtonpost.com, the blog Talking Points Memo and Oxygen.com, which is popular among women. Capitalizing on his Post endorsement, he peppered those sites with banner ads reading “The Washington Post endorsed one Democrat — Creigh Deeds” until polls closed.
Via Derek Thompson, who notes that just a month ago Deeds was running a distant third in the VA primary:
As Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire points out, the same strategy was used by Democrat Scott Murphy in his upset victory in the New York Congressional seat vacated by Hillary Clinton’s replacement, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. In that election surprise, Murphy covered
Google content network pages in the New York’s 20th district with promotions, something operatives called a “Google Network Blast” or “Google Surge.” Although most polls in the month leading up to his win had him behind, Murphy won the election by less than 1000 votes.
To find out more about the strategy, I’ve set up a Google Alert for both terms.
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5 Responses to “Google Blasting”
“Me, I implore the Republicans to become — once and for all — the party of freedom. The true moral highground is there to seize. Our Constitution was created as a shield against government encroachment on our personal lives. Conservatives should be the last people who would dare turn this document into a weapon.”
Good luck. You'll need it…
I'm still at a loss to see how an otherwise completely unrelated group of people are considered “a minority group” linked only by the particular sexual fetishe behaviors otherwise known as “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender”, omitting all the other fetishes, including polygamy?
Are we being bigoted, excluding the other fetishes? I don't think the polygamists will stand for this descrimination for a nanosecond once the precident is set for other fetishes..
Obviously logical persuasion isn't going to work against the religious elements who block this sort of policy. The better bet is getting behind Libertarians, though I'll be the first to admit they've got issue of their own.
If the GOP could manage to drop the majority of their religious base and begin supporting real conservative ideals, I'd be behind them in a second.
So what happens to the dropped religious base, then? There are a lot of people in America who just don't like gay people, and they vote.
Google ads are one way of saturating the web with a political message, but their use is pretty obvious. It is clear that you are buying the coverage. Website managers have learned years ago that search engine optimization is much more effective, because it results in links that appear natural, or “organic” as they are called in the trade.
I've been working on a case study of the of this issue using Connecticut senate primary for Chris Dodd's seat.
http://www.alertrank.com/mrgooglealerts/2009/06…
It shows the need for an effective online strategy. Website builders are light years ahead of political operatives when it comes to search engine optimization.