Nye tal fra USA viser at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) er blevet endnu vigtigere, eftersom internettet har overhalet aviser som informationskilde for vælgere. Endvidere søger vælgerne ikke efter politikkernavne, men emner. Hvis ikke dine emner vises øverst i søgeresultater eller betalte reklamer, så kan du som politikker eller interesseorganisation blive fuldstændig overset.

At vælgere søger efter emner før politikkere stemmer fint overens med teorien i Clay Shirkys bog: “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”. Se præsentationsvideo.

Fra SearchInsider: How Americans Are Searching For Election 2008 Information via How Voters are Using Search Engines in the 2008 Election Cycle på e.politics.

Pointerne er:

• The Internet has outpaced newspapers as the second most influential channel for election news coverage, after television.
• Voters are most concerned about the issues (i.e., they’re more often searching for information about issues rather than directly for information about a given candidate)
• Economy and health care issues have increased in search prominence, while global warming is not as hot
• Obama leads in visibility on issue-related searches in the natural search results, and all candidates could improve in paid results
• Obama is also by far the most popular candidate in terms of search queries, though John McCain leads in paid search with 60% of the total visibility. McCain was much more aggressive about advertising on particular issues instead of just generic election-related search terms.

As for the particular issues, here are the top ten, along with the percentage of searchers hitting each:

1. Health care - 49%
2. Economy - 49%
3. War in Iraq - 48%
4. Gas prices - 44%
5. Immigration - 37%
6. Social security - 37%
7. Jobs - 35%
8. Education - 35%
9. War on terror - 30%
10. Environment - 30%

These results are obviously useful for the campaigns themselves, but they can also help issue advocacy groups that are trying to piggyback off of the high level of political interest this year.