In a recent survey, I found that Wikipedia has an expansive influence in organic Google search results for 2008 presidential candidates. For each candidate, their Wikipedia entry is ranked no lower than 5th place by Google. In addition, the Wikipedia entry ranks higher than the election web presence of that particular candidate for 25% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans. There is no other entity on the web that plays such a systematically influential role in candidate information positioning as Wikipedia, pointing to its increased importance as a messaging tool in the 2008 cycle. A full breakdown of candidate search result positions follows:
| Candidate | Main Site Rank (1) | Election Site Rank (2) | Wikipedia Rank (3) | Outrank? (4) |
| John Edwards | 1 | 1 | 3 | N |
| Joe Biden | 1 | 3 | 5 | N |
| Christopher Dodd | 1 | 4 | 3 | Y |
| Mike Gravel | 1 | 1 | 3 | N |
| Dennis Kucinich | 3 | 1 | 5 | N |
| Barack Obama | 3 | 1 | 2 | N |
| Bill Richardson | 2 | 4 | 1 | Y |
| Hillary Rodham Clinton | 1 | 2 | 3 | N |
| Sam Brownback | 1 | 3 | 4 | N |
| Rudy Giuliani | 2 | 2 | 1 | Y |
| Duncan Hunter | 1 | 2 | 3 | N |
| Mitt Romney | 1 | 1 | 2 | N |
| Jim Gilmore | x (5) | x (5) | 1 | Y |
| Mike Huckabee | 2 | 2 | 1 | Y |
| John McCain | 1 | x (5) | 3 | Y |
| Ron Paul | 1 | 5 | 3 | Y |
| Tom Tancredo | 1 | 3 | 4 | N |
| Tommy Thompson | 2 | 4 | 1 | Y |
This is truly eye-opening data. Wikipedia’s influence is systematic and pervasive, perhaps to the point of overreaching. Should Wikipedia outrank a candidate’s electoral site? Clearly, this shows that monitoring Wikipedia is a must for every campaign – thankfully Wikipedia makes this easy with RSS-based monitoring.
Wikipedia’s role in the 2008 cycle will be interesting to follow. Over the next few months, I’ll be looking at candidate Wikipedia presence and attempting to make some sense of the possibilities.
Caveats about this data and methodology: This represents a one-time analysis of Google search results. These results may and will change over time. The queries were directed to Google.com, from a US-based location. Other Google national sites may provide dissimilar results. Queries were constructed exactly as transcribed – i.e. no quotes around names, or special techniques.
Footnotes:
(1) – This is the search rank of the candidate’s main site, if the candidate has a main site different from their electoral web presence. For example, John McCain or Dennis Kucinich’s Congressional web presence.
(2) – This is the search rank of the candidate’s electoral web presence, the home of their presidential campaign or their exploratory committee.
(3) – This is the search rank of the candidate’s main Wikipedia entry.
(4) – An “Outrank” is declared if the Wikipedia page outranks the candidate’s electoral web presence.
(5) – A result was not found in the top ten search results.
Tags: information, politics, wikipedia
Interesting numbers. I’m actually not surprised, though. :)
I wonder if the relative ranking in the top 5 Google hits really matters? I think more interesting than the numbers are attitudes about Wikipedia as an information resource. In my opinion, this will more strongly influence how Americans use Wikipedia to inform their political activities than the nuances of Google page rank. If tasked with finding information about a candidate and given 5 links that include the candidate’s own page first and the Wikipedia page last, how many people would end up clicking on Wikipedia despite the lower rank? I’ve done many interviews and observations of information seeking online and a WHOLE lotta* people just click on the Wikipedia page first if it’s anywhere to be seen. Part of their explanation for this generally includes a perception of neutrality and clarity that I imagine is not as prevalent when people see a politically-motivated campaign site.
* “whole lotta” is approaching 100% in my experience; this data is primarily coming from observations of youth ages 16-18, so not voters, but soon-to-be voters. :)
I have the tendency to agree with you (about the importance of positioning, as long as it is positioned “above the fold”), especially in light of the fact that people seem to go to Wikipedia automatically. Right on!
This is fascinating. It does seem for ‘item based’ search queries, Wikipedia has become the canonical first stop – if not also the first return in web search.
I think what Andrea said about the perception of neutrality holds a lot of water. People who use the net now seem to tacitly understand Wikipedia has become a place where things are presented fairly well (and balanced?).
Good stuff.
Ok, but note that I am not making any statement about what neutrality means or whether Wikipedia achieves it. :) Just that this perception seems to exist.
It’s funnny that Wikipedia is better ranked for Republicans: my assumption is that, being internationally oriented, Wikipedia offers more links to sites critical to the Republicans then to the Democrats, and exhautive linking (or “Neutral PoV” in Wiki-speak) favors Google-ranking. . .
Oh; and yesterday I’ve stumbled on the Wikipedia page for elections here (in France): do you want me to make a comparison?
Wikipedia really has a lot of influence in Candidate search results. In fact it was the first site I checked out when I looked for information about the 2008 presidential race. I guess it’s only natural because it’s one of the best source of information on the web