Searching for John McCain

By Eric on May 30, 2008

Open Left’s Chris Bowers has a plan to spread the truth about John McCain across the internet by using McCain’s own words against him. I’ll let Chris explain:

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the number one way that voters use the Internet for political action is to search for information on candidates. In 2004, 34 million Americans used the Internet for this purpose. In 2008, that number will increase significantly, possibly to 50 million or more, with tens of millions looking for information on John McCain. As these voters are looking for information on John McCain, our actions will direct them toward nine articles in particular. Voters are looking for information on John McCain, and we are giving it to them.

These nine articles were not chosen lightly. Analyzing and interpreting polling has long been one of the specialties as a blogger, and I have spent the last three months culling through mountains of available polling on John McCain in order to find the top attacks. All nine of these articles directly correspond to messaging on John McCain that, according to my research, effectively raises doubts about McCain among more than 60% of swing voters.

Additionally, six of these nine articles are from news organizations that already boast top twenty-five Google search rankings for either “John McCain” or “McCain.” As such, in order for those six articles to appear in the top twenty Google searches on either John McCain or McCain, we only have to optimize each of those articles relative to other articles from that news organization. That is a very simple, low-hanging fruit sort of task that can be accomplished in only a matter of days.

Further, this messaging is presented by either John McCain himself, or by a non-partisan news organization (or, in most cases, both). As such, the messaging will not be, or be seen as, a partisan attack, making it all the more effective. Personally, I also like that when the inevitable media and conservative outcry against this action kicks in, we can just say that these are all McCain’s own words, and all articles produced by national news organizations. Considering that Michelle Malkin claimed Google should sue me over the Googlebomb campaign two years ago, that her readers issued dozens of death threats against me, and that every single TV news organization contacted me about the campaign two years ago, I really like this aspect of the campaign.

Finally, all of these articles have “McCain” in the title of the article, and most have “McCain” in the URL for the article, making them easier to optimize on Google.

So I’m going to start doing my part to get the word out about John McCain. If you have a webpage or blog and would like to do the same, Chris has the list of websites to link.

Tags: 2008, Chris Bowers, Google, John McCain, Open Left

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1. [...] I mentioned previously, I am participating in the Searching for John McCain project, which is intended to show the truth [...]

   —crazydrumguy | readblog | » Searching for John McCain WordPress Plugin on May 30, 2008 at 9:43 am