Aleyda Solis Blog | Web Enthusiast, Developer and Promoter

Last February 22nd the general elections campaign began in Spain. In just some days -the following March 9th- Spaniards citizens will elect the next President of the Government, however there is nothing is clear yet as the last polls show that at the moment there is only a slight advantage for the current President of the Government and PSOE candidate José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero over Mariano Rajoy the PP candidate.

I have read this interesting post titled “Google SERPs - Barack Obama vs Hillary Clinton” where we can see the status of the two democratic candidates in the Google results and the level of popularity of their websites on the Internet -the Obama website has a higher ranking in Alexa, more backlinks and a lot more indexed pages-.

And who is the most popular candidate for President of the Government in Spain on the Internet?

First I will make a keywords research with Google AdWords Keywod Tool to identify which are the most popular terms related to the candidates -in Spain and spanish-, verify the search volume and answer the question: Who is the most searched candidate in Google?

We can see in the results that the search volume varies according to the keyword match type:

• For the “broad match” option -searches that include general keyword or keyword phrases- Rajoy is in the first position, Zapatero in the second, Mariano Rajoy in third, Entrevista Zapatero in fifth and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in sixth position.
• For the “exact match” option -specific phrase or keyword searches- the results are different: Zapatero is in the first position, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in second, Mariano Rajoy in third and Rajoy in fifth.

What are the trends for these search terms in Google during the last 12 months?

With Google Trends we can see the growth of the candidates related searches during the last months, specifically the Zapatero term search.

Now let’s analyze the google.es results related with both candidates:

• For the Rajoy search:

With a total of 4,680,000 results (hours later I have seen this quantity grows to 6,720,000 results, surely because of the high amount of information recently published) let’s see which are the webs that are in the first results page:

• News Results: Google most recent news are published over the “Top 10″ results. One of news is from Terra España and it is shown that there are 101 related articles. It calls my attention that a photo of Felipe González -and not one of Mariano Rajoy, that would be more relevant- is published along the news.

• First position: It is for the Mariano Rajoy article in the Spanish version of Wikipedia.

• Second and third position: The official website of the Partido Popular. (It calls my attention that the home page description is rather poor, it only says: “Presentación del partido y sus tesis. Prensa relacionada con el PP. Foro y chats.” -Party and its thesis presentation. Press related to the PP. Forums and chats-)

• Fourth position : “La Página No Oficial de Mariano Rajoy” -The unofficial page of Mariano Rajoy-, although relevant to the search it doesn’t exactly promote the Mariano Rajoy candidature.

• Fifth position: “Blogs Pro Rajoy”, on the contrary of the web in the fourth position this one does support the PP candidate.

• Sixth and Seventh position: Access to a couple of very well known Mariano Rajoy videos in YouTube.

• Eighth position: The PP candidate biography in Terra. It was published during the 2004 elections, so it is rather outdated.

• Ninth position: Mariano Rajoy profile in elpais.com in the important figures section.

• Tenth position: The blog “Si Rajoy fuera liberal” -”If Rajoy were liberal”- that it is not about Rajoy in specific but about politics in general.

At the right of the organic results we find three sponsored links: the first one advertising the YouTube channel for the 2008 elections, the second one a Europa Press advertisement promoting the election coverage and the third inviting to download election parodies from Club Movilisto.

As we have seen almost all of the results -but the one in the tenth position that is about general politics and not specific about Mariano Rajoy- are highly relevant to the PP candidate and its official website appears in the second and third position. On the other hand we also obtain an outdated result in the eighth position with a biography published during the 2004 elections and a fourth position result that is critical to the candidate -and shows the necessity of an Online Reputation Management campaign to avoid this type of negative results in the top positions-.

• For the Zapatero search:

With a total of 10,600,000 results (hours later I have seen this quantity grows to 13,000,000 results, surely because of the high amount of information recently published) let’s see which are the webs that are in the first results page for the Zapatero search:

• News Results: Google most recent news are published over the “Top 10″ results. A couple of the news are from Telecinco and it is shown that there are 1275 related articles. A photo of Zapatero and Rajoy shaking hands taken during the last debate is published along the news.

• First position: It is for the José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero article in the Spanish version of Wikipedia.

• Second position: The President of the Government biography section in “La Moncloa” website.

• Third position: The PSOE website “La Mirada Positiva”.

• Fourth position: The Zapatero related news section in “20 Minutos”.

• Fifth y Sixth position: Access to a couple of Zapatero videos in YouTube.
• Seventh position: News section in the PSOE website.
• Eighth position: “Politika” Blog that covers politics and that is critical to Zapatero.
• Ninth position: Zapatero biography section in “El Socialista”.

• Tenth position: The Website of a building company named “Construcciones Zapatero” without any relation with the PSOE candidate.

Below the “Top 10″ results Google gives us additional search terms related with “Zapatero”, as: mueble zapatero, zp, armario zapatero, psoe, biografia zapatero, felipe gonzalez, insecto zapatero y zaplana, which is common with general or very popular terms that can be related to others or more specific.

At the right of the organic results we find five sponsored links: the first one a PSOE Mallorca advertisement, the second one promoting the YouTube channel for the 2008 elections, the third one an IKEA ad (it looks like IKEA has included too broad terms into its pay per clic campaign!), the fourth is a shoe company publicity that is also unrelevant to Zapatero -but it is understandable that it appears there because Zapatero in spanish means “shoemaker”- and the fifth, an Europa Press advertisement promoting the elections coverage.

As we have seen for the Zapatero search in Google we have gotten an unrelevant result in the tenth position -a building company named Zapatero- and another critical result in the eighth position -again we find the necessity of an online reputation management campaign- however we have not found outdated results and we have also seen a PSOE ad presence in the sponsored links. On the other hand, the PSOE websites -La Mirada Positiva and the news section of psoe.es- are in the third and seventh position.

It is interesting to note that the first position for both candidates is for their Wikipedia’s articles and their official websites are in the second and third position (pp.es for Rajoy) and until the seventh position (psoe.es for Zapatero).

Let’s see some relevant data about both parties official websites:

• http://www.pp.es/
  • Google PageRank: 5
  • Alexa Ranking: 84,054
  • Indexed pages in Google: 71,900
  • Indexed pages in Yahoo: 112,287
  • Indexed pages in Live: 100,000
  • Backlinks in Google: 1,700
  • Backlinks in Yahoo: 140,800
  • Domain age: 1996
• http://www.psoe.es/
  • Google PageRank: 6
  • Alexa Ranking: 98,346
  • Indexed pages in Google: 158,000
  • Indexed pages in Yahoo: 144,536
  • Indexed pages in Live: 99,600
  • Backlinks in Google: 4,210
  • Backlinks in Yahoo: 96,462
  • Domain age: 1996

As we can see both websites were registered in 1996 but the PSOE website has a higher PageRank, more indexed pages in Google, Yahoo and Live and more backlinks in Google although the PP website has a better Alexa ranking and more backlinks in Yahoo.

It is interesting to see that even if the official PP website has a smaller PageRank and less backlinks it has a better position for “Rajoy” than the PSOE website for “Zapatero”, this could be possible because of the difference in the level of competition that exists for both terms, as we have seen before the results quantity for the search term “Zapatero” is much more higher than the search for “Rajoy” (the double!).

Conclusions

• The Internet competition is also strong, but Google Trends shows us that Zapatero is more searched than Rajoy.
• The PSOE official website has a higher PageRank and more backlinks than the one of the PP, but this last one has a better position for its candidate search as its search term is not as competitive as the PSOE’s.
• Both parties need to implement online reputation management campaigns as both candidates have for their searches critical results in the top 10 positions.
• The PSOE has additional presence in the results with the sponsored links -through a pay per clic campaign-, which at this moment the PP doesn’t have.

To better understand these results I checked the HTML code of both parties official websites and I have found the following in the PSOE (http://www.psoe.es) one:

Even if the PSOE website has many factors to optimize, among others:

• Create a more relevant Title, Meta Description and Keywords.
• Taking out the unnecesary code in the page -placing the Javascripts in an independent JS file that would be later called from the page- to make the search engines job easier.
• Placing the Google Analytics code where it should be -before the end of the the body tag- and not in the header- (I wonder if they are really gathering data with the code placed there!).

It is far better optimized than the PP website where I found that:

• They should optimize the Title information that is rather poor.
• They should add a Meta Description and Keywords -the page doesn’t have them right now-!
• The main navigation menu is in Flash (¡!) which doesn’t allow the search engines to index its content or the webs it is linking.
• The content is inserted through an iFrame (¡!), which is problematic as the search engines identify that the content inside the iFrame belongs to a different document than the page that is showing the iFrame content:

After identifying these factors in the PP website I think they are really lucky to be in the Top 10 results!

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