Google’s new experiment in giving US presidential candidates “cards” where they have a guaranteed position are, so far, a disaster in their debut as part of today’s Republican debate.
Earlier this week, Google said that it would be allowing US presidential candidates to post content directly to Google that, in turn, would appear in a “card” format in a guaranteed place atop its search results.
The first test of this experiment happened during today’s “undercard” debate between Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Carly Fiorina. It was quickly dominated by Fiorina.
No matter what searches related to the debate that I tried, Fiorina’s posts always came up. Cards from her campaign appeared at the top of Google’s results for “gop debate,” as shown below:
No other candidates had cards. In fact, searching for Huckabee or Santorum by name produced Google search results where the entire top of the results were dominated by Fiorina’s cards:
Her cards ranked tops for a generic search like “debate” and even for “who won the debate,” as shown below:
The problem is almost certainly that none of the candidates other than Fiorina are making use of the new Google card system, which allows candidates to post content directly on Google in some mysterious way. Here’s an example of one of the standalone posts:
Fiorina’s campaign seems to be making use of this new publishing method. The other campaigns are likely not. I certainly can’t locate any content from them. As a result, Fiorina is winning the SEO game because she’s the only one playing in this new space.
It may be that when the main debate begins, other candidates will have their own cards appear. If so, that will provide more variety. But if they don’t, or if Google reacts primarily to ranking these on a first-in, first-out type of situation, it makes a mockery of the balance that its search results have generally sought to provide. It’s allowing one savvy candidate to potentially push all the others aside.
Also frustrating, there’s no way to see all the posts that a candidate has made. With Twitter or Facebook, candidates — like anyone — have profile pages that list everything they’ve published. But with Google, the “More from” link that it provides under any particular post simply generates a new Google search, where you’re back to seeing only a subset of what’s been published. Here’s an example for Fiorina:
The “More from” link shows you some of Fiorina’s posts but not all of them. It’s a handy way for Google to generate more search traffic from these cards but not useful for people who wish to track down all the things she or any candidate has posted to Google.
When the main debate gets going, I’ll be watching for how the cards change.
The post New “Candidate Cards” Let Fiorina Walk All Over Others & Google’s Search Quality In #GOPDebate appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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