Technorati is the best-known and likely most-used blog search engine, and while it is arguably the best overall, it isn’t the best for everything. Google BlogSearch lets you isolate searches according to period of time; Technorati does not do this. And IceRocket has a trend tool that lets you compare up to three different search terms; Technorati will chart just one term at a time.
The IceRocket trend tool can be a great deal of fun, and will tell you how certain search terms compare over the last month, two months or three months. And as interest ramps up in the 2008 presidential election, it might be worth seeing how much attention each of the current White House hopefuls have generated in the blogosphere. That’s what we’re doing here today.
Below is a series of charts organizing these candidates into a handful of categories — by party, by legitimacy, and then, we’ll see how the top contenders in each category stack up — measuring some combination of name recognition and intensity of interest, whether positive or negative:
- First, the top three Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards:
No great surprises here. Each candidate experienced a spike in blog activity when they announced their campaigns, or in Obama’s case, his exploratory committee. Because these searches only cover the last month, Edwards’ spike is almost but not entirely cut off; to see the full shape of his mention line over the past two months, click here. Obama is the only candidate measured in this post who maintained a plateau for more than one day before interest waned, perhaps indicative of the unusual interest in his potential candidacy. Clinton hit the highest mark of them all, surely a testament to her 100% name recognition. Though interest fell off sharply thereafter, it didn’t fall too far. Nevertheless, Obama is tracking very close with her right now; Edwards less so.
- Now the top three Republicans — John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani:
None of the major candidates in the Republican field have actually declared their candidacies — all continue to “explore” the prospect of running for their party’s nomination. It would take more work than I am prepared to do just now to determine what each spike represents for each (though Romney’s Jan. 10-11 YouTube kerfuffle resulted in only a slight uptick). This trio generally shares the same peaks and valleys, indicating that they are often mentioned together — much as the Democratic hopefuls were throughout most of January. It will be interesting to see how they do when each actually, you know, decides to seek the nomination after all.
- Next, the more subjective category of the most-promising from the next tier:
I admit, it was a difficult choice between Dodd and Huckabee, who apparently will file papers for his exploratory committee on Monday. But among the three included here, we see that Brownback and Richardson each saw big spikes for their near-simultaneous announcements (both of which were vastly overshadowed by Hillary’s), whereas Dodd received almost nothing for his Jan. 11 declaration (and, it seems, nothing the others didn’t get). Not to mention, Richardson-related posts briefly doubled those mentioning Brownback. And yet, by week’s end, all three have fallen back into blogospheric obscurity.
- Now, if you look along the lefthand side of each chart above, it shows the percentage of all blog posts in which those terms occurred. (For anyone who reads the political blogosphere to exclusion, these numbers should be a reminder of how small it is compared to the overall ’sphere.) Look again, and you’ll notice that the numbers along each side of each chart are not the same — that is, we’re looking at different scales.
So let’s compare the top-rated from each of the previous charts:
I realize this arbitrarily removes the oft-mentioned Obama in favor of not-so-oft Richardson, but so be it.
And here is where we find another example of what Micah Sifry (brother of Technorati founder David) found by comparing interest in presidential candidates across MySpace, Facebook and Flickr: Republicans lag far behind Democrats in terms of online activity. Even Bill Richardson, nearly an afterthought in the race for the Dem nod, has enjoyed mentions comparable to presumed GOP frontrunner McCain. And this is true even though there is significant anti-McCain sentiment on the right, whereas Richardson excites few on the left, pro or con.
- But perhaps the top-tier candidates are an exception. Let’s look at Obama again, along with fellow second-place mention-getters Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback:
Nope. In fact, here the difference is even more pronounced. Obama’s mentions do not remotely track with the Republican candidates listed here, at least not since he threw his hat into the ring adjacent to the ring in which he is ultimately expected to throw said metaphorical hat. Brownback surged ahead of Romney for a few days, and could again. Indeed, as the one Republican candidate with an easily definable constituency (religious conservatives) one might expect him to generate disproportionate interest from online evangelicals. But as yet, he has not. Perhaps conservatives are even more interested in “electability” than their ideological counterparts.
Of course, we are only measuring raw mentions with no value judgments attached. The only thing we know for sure is that Democrats are getting more play than Republicans. My assumption from reading blogs on both sides is that Republicans are discussing Democratic candidates more than Democrats are the Republicans. Though the universally-known Hillary Clinton obviously has been the most-mentioned, at least half of those discussions (and probably more) are non-supportive. The same is largely true of McCain, although I’d wager he is mentioned less often by liberals than Hillary is by conservatives.
These are limited findings based on limited tools. Take them all with a healthy dose of skepticism, and remember that this is only a one-month snapshot early in the process. We don’t even know how many of these mentions come from plugged-in, “political” blogs as opposed to online journals at Blogspot, LiveJournal and MySpace. Perhaps the lopsided interest in Democratic candidates comes from casual commentators who know Hillary best and find Obama intriguing. A more in-depth analysis could answer these questions.
But again, it is early. Very early. I will follow up again in coming months, and I invite readers to run their own trend searches. And please add any further insights in the comments.
Relatedly: Leaving 