The Most Powerful Websites In Politics? Presenting The U.S. Of Search

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The Most Powerful Websites In Politics? Presenting The U.S. Of Search by Jono Alderson, Linkdex

New data indicates that voters are 3 times more likely to turn to Wikipedia when searching for information around the US presidential election, than they are to turn to official news publications.

Linkdex, a UK and US-based SEO platform, has just released their latest research report and interactive resource, the United States of Search.

The United States of Search allows users to conduct their own research, and explore how and what people across the US are searching for, and what they are finding, around the 2016 US Election.

The data shows users which candidates and topics voters are actively seeking information on, and which publications and websites are achieving greater visibility in Google’s search results – as well as how these trends and results vary state-by-state.

Powerful Websites In Politics

Powerful Websites In Politics – Which Sites Are Most Visible?

Identified through the Linkdex Share of Search metric, the official media publications which are currently leading the election readership race, ranked by the percentage of estimated visits, are:

  1. www.nytimes.com                     4.48%
  2. www.cnn.com                             3.53%
  3. www.washingtonpost.com     2.76%
  4. www.politico.com                      1.23%
  5. www.theatlantic.com               1.05%

But it’s Wikipedia that is performing the best, owning 11.69% of the search traffic; that’s nearly 3 times the amount that the next biggest publication (the New York Times) is receiving, and greater than the sum of all of the top 5 media websites’ share of search.

Why does this matter?

The role of search and of search data has, and will continue, to be a significant factor in the race for the 2016 US Election.

Individual search queries are unique expressions of a voter’s unanswered question at a specific moment. As such, search data is able to offer an alternative perspective and method in gauging overall voters’ sentiment on specific topics, and specific candidates.

The insights from search can be incredibly revealing with regards to voter sentiment and behavior across the USA. And the websites and pages that voters are served by Google as a result of their queries may very well affect their decisions.

Jono Alderson, Head of Digital at Linkdex said: “By comparing and analyzing search data and website visibility across all fifty US States, we hoped to build a picture of inter-state variation in search behaviour, online media, and the journeys voters take to reach their decisions. We’ve discovered that there are a handful of websites, like Wikipedia and the New York Times, which are hugely influential when people are researching political topics and developing voting preferences.”

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