McCain's Folly? Botching the Chance to Define Sarah Palin
By Nancy Scola, 08/30/2008 - 3:25pm

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Upon hearing the startling news yesterday that John McCain had tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate, the first thing many of us in the Lower 49 did was to hustle to our computers, BlackBerries, and iPhones to try to get up to speed on her. This is candidate so little known to the world two days ago that even many of the savvy politicos in Denver for the Democratic National Convention found themselves scrambling to figure out whether the Republican VP's pick last name is pronounced like "pollen" or if it instead rhymes with "Van Halen," so as not to appear completely ignorant about this newly-minted national figure. (FYI -- it's the latter.)

And so, like many of us, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan Googled up Palin's name yesterday. (Thanks to Sara Holoubek for the heads up on Googling Palin and Danny's post.) What he found was that, with "Sarah Palin" the top search on Google, the McCain campaign was missing an enormous opportunity to define Palin for the world in those critical hours after her nomination, the magic window during which much of the "conventional wisdom" around her candidacy was being set.

Searches for "Sarah Palin," Danny found, returned no Google ad beyond one offering the domain name Palin.me for sale. Searching for "McCain Palin" does turn up an ad linked to JohnMcCain.com, but the landing page offers up nothing more than a landing page with a picture of the Republican ticket, a donation button, and an email sign up link. Searchers are no more knowledgeable about Palin than they were when they started.

As of this morning, more than a day after the news of Palin's pick broke, Googling up "Sarah Palin" does bring up an ad linked to the McCain camp. Click on the link, though, and you get only the text of Palin's official remarks yesterday in response to her selection -- which are pretty much the one single chunk of Palin-related of content that no one paying attention to this process needs to be directed to. If you're interested in learning more about the woman who might well be a heartbeat away from the presidency come fall, then you've probably already heard what she had to say yesterday. It's everything else about her that's of interest. So why hasn't the McCain camp pulled together a page focused on her rather fascinating biography?

All eyes then are ending up on the top organic result for Palin's name: her Wikipedia entry. Sarah Palin, suddenly the most interesting person in the world, is being defined by what's been written about her on a community-edited site, rather than by what the McCain campaign wants the world to know about her. It's hard not to see that as a missed opportunity of Alaskan proportions.

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Looks like they were trying to control the story

At least on Wikipedia:

A user name Young Trigg, the same name as her son, made over 30 edits to her wikipedia page the night before the announcement.

Hat tip to Daily Kos diarist davefromqueens.

By wsfinkel at Sat, 08/30/2008 - 3:53pm | login or register to post comments

Oh they did better than that

take a look!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/29/AR200808...

By Freedomfighter at Sat, 08/30/2008 - 4:05pm | login or register to post comments

You Botched Your Post

Danny looked before she was officially announced and then watched as the search program was rolled out. I've already emailed and Twittered with Danny about his article.

However, what I find interesting is your lack of reference to the WSJ article which prompted Danny to keep a very close eye on McCain's paid search campaign. Nancy why no mention of that or are you too biased to actually report a nationally recognized article written by the WSJ that showed how really ground breaking McCain's paid search program really is? I guess an accurate reporting of what's really happening is beyond your capability.

Eric Frenchman

By EricFrenchman at Sat, 08/30/2008 - 8:13pm | login or register to post comments

On Botching and Paid Search

Eric -- Thanks so much for writing. It's good hearing your take, especially considering that, if I'm not mistaken, you help to head up the McCain campaign's paid search operation. I'd be great, then, to get your informed opinion of the situation. But I don't notice in your comment where you detail what's incorrect about the above post.

The search results for "Sarah Palin" as still the same at the moment as when the post was written. Searches for "McCain Palin" still tonight point to a landing page with a photo of the ticket, a donation button, and an e-mail sign-up box. And the extent of the Palin-related content on JohnMcCain.com is still limited to the text of yesterday's remarks. So what, then, differs here from your take?

By Nancy Scola at Sat, 08/30/2008 - 9:38pm | login or register to post comments

A few notes

Eric - I think you are avoiding the point: millions of web users wanted (shall I say, needed) to learn more about Sarah Palin on Friday, and the McCain web team missed the opportunity to present relevant content. This was made painfully clear when I realized that Palin's wikipedia page was the first source of information a few colleagues and I turned to. (that's a whole other story...)

If this was intentional, I'd love to know the details. I do see that there is now a paid search result for "Sarah Palin" with this copy: "Learn More About Sarah Palin/John McCain's Selection for VP./JohnMcCain.com/Palin"

For the record, I first sent my conclusions to techPres on Friday before I saw Danny's post, and forwarded his link on Sat am. I had not read the WSJ article.

By saraholoubek at Sun, 08/31/2008 - 10:26am | login or register to post comments

Searching for Good Comments :-)

I made a post earlier in the day, but I don't see them now. I'm not blaming techpresident it was probably my mobile phone connection. So if my earlier and longer response appears, I apologize for the duplication.

1)I didn't see the full extent and premise of Danny's article in your post. Danny's article looked at the presidential campaigns (as in plural) and you chose not to comment on both search campaigns only McCain's. How can you think you offer "unbiased" commentary when you "zing" someone who does marketing while the other is mysteriously absent of marketing.

2) As I wrote to Danny he witnessed us rolling out the search program as the campaign made the announcement. There are many objectives we have for search including ROI and pushing out messages. How do you know we "disappointed"? I have the data and it was an overwhelming success.

Linking to Danny's post without mentioning both sides and not mentioning the WSJ which got Danny to review the search campaigns is unfair.

By EricFrenchman at Sun, 08/31/2008 - 3:00pm | login or register to post comments

Sara Palin giggles at cancer

All I could find on the internet was a taste of how she would treat others. I'm surprised this wasn't scrubbed out.

I was appalled to hear this clip where Sara Palin laughs when a talk radio announcer calls one of her political rivals "a b**** and a cancer". The woman referred to is a cancer survivor.

This is not a woman living in lovingkindness to others.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=sara+palin+bitch+cancer&hl=en&emb=...

By Deena at Mon, 09/01/2008 - 3:21pm | login or register to post comments



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