Google is moving into the political scene.  They’ve launched a Google+ Page to focus on politics and elections, they’re blogging about election issues, posting the candidate’s videos, and they put together a trend center which allows you to track all sorts of data.

Update: Mitt Romney is winning Super Tuesday in search volume

You’d think they are wanting to influence and “lobby” congress, but Google’s PAC is not raising a lot of money, especially compared to their rivals Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter.  After the influence they exerted against SOPA and PIPA it appears Google might not have to lobby congress the traditional way.  Google has a direct and strong connection with its users and exerted their power and influence to stop SOPA and PIPA.

Google is looking to prove Google’s worth and value to the political community.  Some estimates have it that Obama alone will have $1 Billion dollars to spend and Google wants to position themselves to earn a chunk of that cash.

Google’s Case

Google is making their case that if campaigns are not spending money with them, then their campaign will get left behind. Big political campaigns will have a fair amount of cash on hand yet that cash is held with a tight grip. Google is making their case to earn a bigger portion of the tight budget.

Recently Google hired a outside polling company to find out how many people were interacting with politics online (using data to prove their case). Ultimately the polling firm concluded that, “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.” While Google is making its case for more money they’ve also tried to “predict” the outcomes of the Republican Primaries.

Predicting Results

Google has massive amounts of data and the ability to chart trends of search volume.  Initially Google thought they could “predict” the results of the Republican primary elections.  But after an unconventional primary season and some surprising results Google has learned that it is a lot harder to predict human voting behavior than they ever imagined.

Google has changed their stance from predicting the primaries to reporting after the fact. For example they’ve published reports predicting the election results of South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, but not of Arizona, Michigan, and Florida.

Will Mitt Win?

Mitt Romney won Arizona and Michigan, and Washington votes this Saturday.  He’s up in the delegate count and President Obama’s campaign continues to attack him.  These are indications that Mitt will win the Republican nomination and maybe the global search trends will prove accurate, because Mitt Romney has the most search volume in the world, at least out of the other republican contenders.

Additional Resources:

• Regional Search Trends  http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Global Search Trends https://plus.google.com/114401727024677849167/posts/RtNT8doEjV1
• Twitter Mentions http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mention-machine
• YouTube Videos http://www.youtube.com/politics
• Google News Mentions http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/trends
• Ad Spending http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/track-presidential-campaign-ads-2012/

Google – Getting Into The 2012 Election is a post by SEO expert Matthew Briggs. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Having your business rank in local search results can get complicated, especially if the local review sites don’t have your correct business address. Correlating the right business address online is super important in order to rank in local search results. Logging into each local review site individually and correcting your business address manually may seem like you’re David facing off Goliath–but there is an easier way.

A more efficient way to correct the information for your business is to correct the errors before the information is sent to the hundreds of local review sites. You will have to correct your data in the source with the data providers. Currently, there are three major data providers including Localeze, Infogroup, and Universal Business Listing.

Why Change Information With The Data Provider?

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing get their local business information from two locations; they store local business information in their own index and receive it from data providers.

Once your business information is submitted to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, your information will start to trickle down to smaller local review sites like Yelp, SuperPages, and DexKnows. These smaller local review sites pull their data from the larger data providers. If you correlate your business information at the source of the problem (major data providers) then you’ll save yourself time, effort, energy, and money. That’s the best way to take on the giant.

We’ve seen awesome results for our local SEO clients. Simply go to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, enter your information, pay a small fee, and you’ll have all of your local business information correlated across the Internet. Now that’s an easy way to do small business SEO.

Good Luck!

Do You Use Data Providers To Boost Your Local Search Results? is a post by SEO expert Matthew Briggs. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

How is social media impacting your SEO rankings? If you live in Utah, your chance to personally ask Mark Zuckerberg has arrived. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is coming to BYU with Senator Orrin Hatch. While some BYU students hope he’s coming to cheer on rising star Jimmer Fredette, he’s really coming to discuss technology issues and opportunities that face our particular digital age. Senator Hatch sits on the High-Tech Task Force Senate Committee and recently invited Zuckerberg to participate in a Q&A styled forum held at BYU. Both Zuckerberg and Hatch will be meeting in BYU’s Tanner Building at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, March 22. Questions can be submitted before hand to BYU’s Facebook page. Doors open at 9:00 AM and seating is reserved on a first come first serve basis.

It appears that some BYU Basketball fans are excited for the visit—one student already submitted the question, “Mark, what is the total number of times “Jimmer” has been mentioned in people’s status?”

What SEO question would you personally ask Mark Zuckerberg?

The Facebook God is Coming to Utah is a post by SEO expert Matthew Briggs. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.