With the Presidential primaries well under way, it’s time for a follow-up to my March 2007 post about how the Presidential candidates rate for SEO. Conveniently the same top 3 candidates in both parties are both considered the top 3 candidates, so I’m going to stick with the same in my new analysis (Democrats: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Republicans: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain). In my previous post I looked at a few points that haven’t changed, like age of domain and the choice of domain URL, so refer to that post for that analysis.
This analysis looks at basic SEO metrics and compares data from January 2008 to March 2007. A few new measurements are given following these, including PPC branding and a new metric called IndexRank. And for fun we’ll come up with the winners from both parties in terms of their effectiveness in SEO.
Backlinks
Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site. These figures are from Yahoo.
| Candidate | March ’07 | January ’08 | % Increase |
| Barack Obama | 119,909 | 734,395 | 612% |
| John Edwards | 15,498 | 581,823 | 3754% |
| Hillary Clinton | 79,219 | 501,415 | 632% |
| Rudy Giuliani | 38,236 | 348,025 | 910% |
| Mitt Romney | 39,245 | 291,470 | 742% |
| John McCain | 7,428 | 199,813 | 2690% |
Barack Obama leads in backlinks by about 150,000 backlinks. John Edwards started with having almost 6 times less than Hillary and beats her by 80,000 backlinks.
In the Republican field, John McCain started off with very few (comparatively) backlinks and still ends with 100,000 less than Mitt Romney. Romney leads Rudy by about 50,000 links.
Technorati Links
This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.
| Candidate | March ’07 | January ’08 | % Increase |
| Barack Obama | 6,527 | 22,662 | 347% |
| John Edwards | 4,952 | 21,766 | 440% |
| Hillary Clinton | 3,710 | 20,933 | 564% |
| Mitt Romney | 1,756 | 11,019 | 627% |
| Rudy Giuliani | 342 | 8,206 | 2400% |
| John McCain | 670 | 6,172 | 921% |
Obama again leads on Technorati links and John Edwards and Clinton keep their same position, with Hillary having the most percentage increase.
Mitt Romney started well ahead of both Rudy and John (2.5 X more and 5 X more respectively) and still leads in Technorati links. Rudy surpasses John McCain with a larger increase in links.
Alexa Rank
I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.
| Candidate | March ’07 | January ’08 | Change |
| Barack Obama | 12,581 | 17,303 | -4,722 |
| Hillary Clinton | 18,727 | 32,729 | -14,002 |
| John Edwards | 33,485 | 69,182 | -35,697 |
| Mitt Romney | 129,490 | 63,734 | +65,756 |
| Rudy Giuliani | Not Ranked | 92,963 | unknown |
| John McCain | 178,788 | 99,639 | +79,149 |
All of the Democratic candidates have seen a drop in their Alexa Rank since March 2007, with John Edwards taking the worst drop. Barack Obama leads with the best rank.
All of the Republican candidates see a better Alexa ranking, although anything was better than Rudy’s rank in March 2007. Mitt Romney leads with the best rank.
Page Strength
| Candidate | March ’07 | January ’08 | Change |
| John Edwards | 6.5/10 | 8.5/10 | +2 |
| Barack Obama | 5/10 | 8/10 | +3 |
| Hillary Clinton | 5.5/10 | 6.5/10 | +1 |
| John McCain | 3.5/10 | 7/10 | +3.5 |
| Mitt Romney | 4/10 | 7/10 | +3 |
| Rudy Giuliani | 3.5/10 | 6.5/10 | +3 |
All candidates made significant strides, as would be expected. PageStrength is not a measurement of how good the pages are, but of how well-known, cited, visited, and linked to a site is.
John Edwards has the highest PageStrength while Barack jumped the most, moving from third to second.
John McCain made the most stride but also started as the lowest in PageStrength. Both McCain and Romney end up with the same PageStrength, both beating out Hillary’s PageStrength.
Indexed Pages
Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.
| Candidate | March ’07 | January ’08 |
| Barack Obama | 148/525 | 302,000/315,000 |
| Hillary Clinton | 387/1133 | 39,100/19,900 |
| John Edwards | 4,230/66 | 31,700/209,000 |
| Rudy Giuliani | 91/34 | 6,400/3,650 |
| John McCain | 457/155 | 4,940/19,400 |
| Mitt Romney | 309/157 | 4,190/4,980 |
These numbers are all over the place, it’s hard to say who reports more accurately (Google vs. Yahoo). However, there’s no doubt that Obama has created tons of content (probably a lot of user-generated content).
PPC Branding
I’m not going to recap the PPC from March 2007 because the keywords I looked at were only used by 2 of the candidates. This time I chose to look at the use of PPC for their own name, which I feel is a reflection of their PPC campaign. If you’re not running ads for your brand (your name) you’re probably not running much of a PPC campaign.
Barack Obama – Ads by Obama and Rudy
Hillary Clinton – Ad by Rudy
John Edwards – Ad by Rudy
Rudy Giuliani – Ad by Rudy
Mitt Romney – Ads by Rudy and Mike Huckabee
John McCain – Ads by McCain and Rudy
Rudy clearly comes out a winner, but keep in mind this is only a snapshot. If you follow these links at different times of day and different geographical locations you may see very different results. These are coming from the West Coast.
IndexRank – a measurement of content freshness
This metric is from 0-10 where 10 is the highest. The higher the number the better the content growth, freshness, and the more indexed the site is by Google.
Hillary Clinton – 8
Barack Obama – 8
John Edwards – 5
Mitt Romney – 9
John McCain – 8
Rudy Giuliani – 6
Mitt Romney wins out with a 9 above even the Democrats. Hillary and Obama are both at 8 and John Edwards lags way behind the whole group with a 5. Rudy lags behind the Republican candidates with a 6.
The Winners
Back in March 2007 there was no clear SEO winner in either party. After 10 months of campaigning, you can really see a lot of changes in all the candidates, some more than others.
In the Democratic party, Barack Obama clearly trumps both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the growth of their site and the pursuit in SEO.
In the Republican party, its not as clear but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have made great strides, but I think Mitt Romney’s advantage in traffic, IndexRank, and Technorati links gives him an edge over Giuliani.
