Below is live coverage of the Search & The US Presidential Campaign from SMX West 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.
| Search & The US Presidential Campaign | (02/11/2009) Powered by: CoveritLive |
4:29 | Sara Holoubek is introducing this panel |
4:33 | Jeff Lane appiled to be the SEO for Obama and got it, he saw the listing on CLickZ |
4:34 | Justine Lam for ROn Paul helped out for the campaign and did this |
4:34 | Bill Tancer is also on the panel, he is "the data guy" |
4:34 | How was the process different from a typical retailer? |
| 4:35 |   |
4:35 | Jeff said he didnt do much budgeting, but they were ROI focused on the PPC side |
4:35 | He was given an order and told to go |
4:36 | The guys above him decide to do X and he typically implements it |
4:37 | Justine's people were nervous to spend on SEM back then, so they did very little |
4:37 | She did what ever she could for free, relying on social media mostly, she said |
| 4:37 |  |
4:38 | Jeff came in by the general election, and they proved SEM would work to generate donations... so he was instructed to spend as much as he can |
4:38 | Jeff had issues with SEO, cause there was not enough time to get SEO going. |
| 4:38 |  |
4:39 | Bill what were the voter behaviors... |
4:40 | until general election, searches for ron paul were greater then obama, until Obama appeared on Opera |
4:40 | People visiting RonPaul.com were a spread of political loyalists |
4:40 | The success of RonPaul online was mostly due to early adopters |
4:47 | One of Obama's best donation days was when Sarah Palin was announced, interesting.. |
4:50 | Bill said the search data he was seeing was very depressing, searches for how much obama weighs, etc, its not important. |
4:51 | Sorry this session isn't so "actionable" so hard to live blog it... |
4:53 | Obama negative keyworded "husain" type of keywords, so Obama wouldn't come up and other keywords like it. |
4:53 | Room is also not so full |
| 4:53 |  |
4:54 | Political candidates used geo targeting tools |
4:55 | Jeff said Obama geo targeted big time, between swing states and non swing states |
4:56 | Obama also used Google's custom geo targeting tool and drew out the exact area that had a higher density of specific type of voters |
4:56 | They also used DMAs |
4:56 | Sara asked if it made a difference, he said it did |
4:56 | Jeff said it got very targeted, espesially in Google |
4:57 | But mostly by state |
4:57 | Bill pulled data from November 2007, showing searches by candidate name by state... |
4:58 | You can see any given week, how searches change by week, after candidates visit states |
4:58 | They used Google Analytics and Website Optimizer, mostly free stuff |
4:59 | Worker hours were like 10 hours days, 6 days a week or so... people would be there until 2am every day |
4:59 | It is not all work Justine said, they are talking all night about nothingness sometimes |
5:00 | What was different? |
5:00 | Jeff said lots of similarities |
5:01 | You got to be careful with the ads you make and keywords you target |
5:02 | Competitive analysis? |
5:03 | Jeff said they often checked out blogs of competitors for insights, he isnt sure if it helped them |
5:04 | Did tons of testing on landing pages and had 8 guys to just do analytics for them, using mostly google optimizer, lots of AB testing |
5:04 | They have seen 50% increases in changes |
5:05 | Justine had zero AB stuff, no testing... |
5:05 | Obama said Blue buttons worked well |
5:06 | Q&A Time, I am so tired, I am not covering Q&A, sorry |
5:06 | Tune in tomorrow for more live coverage of SMX West 2009! |
5:06 | That is all we got for this session. We will be ending the live blog session but you can reply or view the transcript immediately after I end this broadcast. Thanks for tuning in to the Search Engine Roundtable's Live Coverage! |
5:06 |  |
