John McCain has taken some heat for not knowing how to use a computer, and it’s not just about the candidate himself. Barack Obama’s web presence has been far-reaching an dominant, with McCain’s efforts often being criticized.

McCain’s campaign isn’t ever going to top the Obama juggernaut for sheer volume, but he can employ some stealth tactics that could sway undecided voters searching about issues or people associated with the campaign.

And that’s just what McCain’s campaign did: they placed a high bid on Google Adwords for the term “joe biden” yesterday, so when people did a search for Biden, there was a high-ranking ad that led to a video of Joe Biden trash-talking Obama earlier in the campaign. Since users are specifically searching for information about these exact terms, the impressions must be extremely valuable for the McCain campaign in attracting undecided voters.

The McCain campaign also has been bidding up other terms, like “housing crisis” and “u.s. economy,” sending those who click on the ads to other videos where McCain outlines his solution to those problems. In fact, McCain has generated over 15 million sponsored link impressions, compared to Obama’s 1 million.

Obama has a big advantage right now in SEO, with his organic results towering over McCain’s. Obama beat McCain two to one for unique visitors in July, suggesting his unpaid search traffic is dominant. He’s also utilizing display ads to dizzying levels of impressions. Display ads have led to about 416 million impressions compared to McCain’s 16.5 million.

Right now on the web, Obama is the grand army mowing down the competition, but McCain increasingly appears to be fighting an effective guerrilla war online. With the polls virtually tied, every impression counts.

Thanks to EMILY STEEL and SUZANNE VRANICA at the Wall Street Journal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 2:25 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.