The search warfare crews we all remember from the 2004 elections (you know, the “miserable failure” ones) are not taking the upcoming midterm election lying down, or even taking for granted reconfiguring of a Congress with a 16% approval rating. The Google-bomb is already set, and is ticking menacingly.
This particular Google-bomb is quite sophisticated, carrying a double warhead containing manipulated search results and an AdWords campaign. It is targeted at the 70 Republican candidates running for Congress across the nation – a list that includes Rick Santorum and recently controversial George Allen.
From Bowers description:
The utilization of Google Adwords and simultaneous, widespread embedded hyperlinks in order to drive as many voters as possible toward the most damning, non-partisan article written on the Republican candidate in seventy key US Senate and House races. The campaign will run from Tuesday, October 24th until Tuesday, November 7th.
Bowers said that BlogPac, an organization devoted to “waging politics online” run by Bowers and MyDD blogger Matt Stoller, would pay the costs of an AdWords campaign targeting what he predicts to be 20 million voters searching for candidates online.
It is unclear as to whether negative political AdWords campaigns are really allowed. Google has been known to ban political advertisements as a violation of guidelines against “the advertisement of websites that contain language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization.”
But that may be a technicality if they’re advertising a news article instead of a website. Google has not responded for comment on the planned Google-bomb.
The setting off of the bomb comes with some interesting timing. Just today, Google announced the release of the Google Earth Election Guide, a service that gathers information about candidates running in every district – who’s running, their campaign finance information, voter registration sites, and live feeds from Web search and News search results.
If Bowers accomplishes his mission, that new service will be an unexpected extension of the arsenal. Not to aid their enemies or anything, but it seems an AdWords campaign is easily defeated if Republican opposition wanted to engage in some click fraud to drain BlogPac’s advertising budget.
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