When it comes to the 2012 presidential election, Google wants to play too! Google started a Google+ page that has been tracking the political race by providing updates via video, news, election results, and trends. Their new trend center allows you to track all kinds of data from the elections.
Google has proven that their users can be influential, as demonstrated by their recent stand against SOPA and PIPA. Thus, the company will not have to lobby too hard to gain stake with politicians online campaign spending. This is Google’s move to start competing with rivals Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter.
Is Google Worth the Money?
Google is making a strong case to get their hands on the money of big political campaigns. They have hired a polling company to prove how many people use online resources to interact with politics. The firm stated “Our findings in South Carolina reaffirm that campaigns which do not fully embrace the Internet as a means to engage voters — for fundraising, persuasion, and turnout — do so at their own peril.”
Predicting Results
While proving their ability to influence voters, Google has also tried to predict the outcomes of the Republican Primaries. The company has done this by attempting to predict outcomes based on search trends in voting States.
Google also has the analytics to chart trends and provide massive amounts of data they collect, initially trying to predict the results of the Republican primary election. They saw trends in the number of searches and the sentiments of social media with election results; yet, it’s not as successful as they hoped. Their predictions were off after unconventional primary season and some varied results. Now they have moved on to report on the election rather than trying to predict, after they attempted to predict South Carolina, Iowa, & New Hampshire but reported on Arizona, Michigan, and Florida.
Trends and Google
From the trends section of the Google Politics & Elections they have trends under the categories of: Search Trends – Based on volume, Google News Mention – Mentions in articles and blog posts, and YouTube Video Views- Views from candidate channels.
It allows you to narrow trends based upon the candidates and major issues. It even lets you play the trends through specific dates to see the movement in the race.
Earlier we blogged that the Wright State University was using Twitter to analyze historic events and Harvard grads were using Google search results to help predict epidemics. Using this large amount of data will be useful in the future to track, even predict events, and record social behaviors. This will be valuable to everyone from advertisers to doctors. Evaluating this data will play into the SEO strategy of many companies trying to predict trends and provide opportunities to promote their web presence. Right now many people will search for “viral” topics and this may not reflect the actual interests or events happening in their lives, so this information will need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, social media trends are something to keep an eye on in the future.
Increase your Online Marketing exposure in 2012 with the above tips and contact us if you need assistance.
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