Hutchison Camp Uses SEO to Call Rick Perry 'Gay'

Political Marketing Sullies Everything It Touches

Posted by Ken Wheaton on 07.31.09 @ 10:58 AM

Note to politicians: It's hard for people to prove you're behind sleazy brochures stuck under windshields or ads funded by outside groups. It's not so hard to bust your sleazy tactics on your own website. PEOPLE CAN READ YOUR SOURCE CODE!!!

That's the lesson being learned down in Texas by a gubernatorial campaign site for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. According to W. Gardner Selby at the Austin American-Statesman, the site was search optimized with all sorts of interesting phrases, including "Rick Perry Gay." (Here's a complete list of the words found.)

The campaign, which said it has removed the phrases, told Selby that a vendor sold them a tool that generates the phrases to divine the most frequent web searches "using one or all of the terms 'Rick Perry,' 'Kay Bailey Hutchison' and 'Texas.'" According to Selby, the "generated phrases aren't intended to drive up traffic to the ... site; they are intended to help Hutchison's campaign decide most efficiently where to purchase banner ads ... that would drive people to the site."

2 Comments

By HyperDogMedia | Louisville, CO September 1, 2009 05:24:05 pm:

We perform quite a bit on online reputation management - and while this is a pretty obvious case, most aren't. We've been called in to help companies defend themselves in social media, consumer rating sites, search results, and more. Protecting a brand or political image has never had such a challenging period of history.

Major brands need to be snatching up any URL that could potentially damage their reputation, and registration is much faster than litigation!
http://www.hyperdogmedia.com/blog/2007/07/20/social-media-optimization-important-real-estate/

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By vietseoguy | HCM November 15, 2009 11:47:37 pm:

This campaign reminds me of the Google bombing "Failure" for The White House. Be careful.
Du Nguyen, SEO Consultant
http://dunguyen.com/

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