Cain Camp Turns Google Searches to Its Benefit
We do it every day: ‘google’ something we are interested in or want to know more about. In order for Google to be there for us to search, Google must make money just like every other company. Therefore, Google charges other companies to advertise on Google’s webpages. Companies pay lots of money for their advertisements and links to come up first or at the top of the page so it is the first link that users see. For example, when I type in “ski” to Google, the first links are advertisements for ski.com and ski rental places. Therefore, the purpose of paying lots of money to be at the top of the list is people will select their links first and possibly use their service instead of spending hours searching through every page to find the information they are looking for on skis. Companies link their pages to specific keywords that people type into Google’s search. This way ski companies are not listed under “summer sports in Florida” searches. People use Google every day to search for items on the internet, from skiing to presidential candidates and Google capitalizes on the public’s thirst for knowledge.
Recently, information about Herman Cain’s sexual harassment became big news. Right away, many people googled keywords like Herman Cain, Cain vs. Sharon Bialek and many other sexual harassment allegation searches that linked to his stories. However, the Cain campaign was not about to let this outburst ruin his chances at the presidency. “Instead of the most recent news report popping up first on Wednesday, the Cain campaign paid for search results to produce an ad with links to a new Web site, CainTruth, devoted to defending Mr. Cain, the Republican presidential candidate, and telling his side of the story” (Preston, 1). The Cain campaign spent millions of dollars in digital political advertising in Google’s AdSense to dampen the sexual harassment allegation stories and information that could have hurt Cain’s campaign. They paid lots of money to be like ski.com so the first links that people would select when typing those keywords in would be CainTruth and other sites by Cain to suppress and bypass the media’s negative allegations. Advertising is the name of the game for Google, and companies are willing to shell out as much money as necessary to make sure when they are ‘googled’ they come out on top. Placement on the site is a hot commodity that companies want to take advantage of, for reasons ranging from moving product to damage control.