Adventures in campaign miscommunication: Ron Paul has problems coming in first…on Google

arisenagain

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Adventures in campaign miscommunication: Ron Paul has problems coming in first…on Google

http://uwelectioneye.seattletimes.com/2012/02/18/adventures-in-campaign-miscommunication/


A web search for “Ron Paul” will produce a barrage of sites, and at first glance it is near impossible to discern which site is the official Paul campaign site. All of the results sound legitimate enough: ronpaul.com, ronpaul2012.com, ronpaul.org, ronpaulforpresident2012.com, and ronpaul2012.net, just to name a few.
 
I don't think it's a big a problem.
On Google it comes up as "Ron Paul 2012 Official Campaign Website" so hopefully most people are competent enough to tell the difference.

Plus on the bright side we aren't Santorum. ;)
 
The owners of ronpaul.com should redirect to Ron's campaign site. ronpaul.com is farming money from Paul's popularity. If I had to guess I'd say it's in the six figures.

ronpaul.com is getting about half the traffic of Paul's official campaign site. 200,000 unique visitors last month. How many of them mistakenly donated to that grassroots site?

Not cool.
 
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The owners of ronpaul.com should redirect to Ron's campaign site. ronpaul.com is farming money from Paul's popularity. If I had to guess I'd say it's in the six figures.

ronpaul.com is getting about half the traffic of Paul's official campaign site. 200,000 unique visitors last month. How many of them mistakenly donated to that grassroots site?

Not cool.

Have you checked it recently? Because I just did and they couldn't make it any clearer than they have.

http://www.ronpaul.com/donate/
 
Have you checked it recently? Because I just did and they couldn't make it any clearer than they have.

http://www.ronpaul.com/donate/

I checked it. Even scams can be more obvious than that and are highly successful. In my estimate of how much they raised, it accounted for the huge amount of people that would notice the warnings.

Let's assume they had 800,000 unique visitors since Paul announced his run (roughly accurate). It would take 1,000 drunk, high, busy, bad eyesight, dyslexic people buying the cheapest mug for them to be in the six figures. How about 2,000 people?

You get the idea.
 
I checked it. Even scams can be more obvious than that and are highly successful. In my estimate of how much they raised, it accounted for the huge amount of people that would notice the warnings.

Let's assume they had 800,000 unique visitors since Paul announced his run (roughly accurate). It would take 1,000 drunk, high, busy, bad eyesight, dyslexic people buying the cheapest mug for them to be in the six figures. How about 2,000 people?

You get the idea.

Maybe so, but it is not like they are being misleading. They state who they are on the front page and make it abundantly clear on the donate page.

If people still think it's the official campaign site, then I guess Darwin's law is well in effect at that point.
 
I checked it. Even scams can be more obvious than that and are highly successful. In my estimate of how much they raised, it accounted for the huge amount of people that would notice the warnings.

Let's assume they had 800,000 unique visitors since Paul announced his run (roughly accurate). It would take 1,000 drunk, high, busy, bad eyesight, dyslexic people buying the cheapest mug for them to be in the six figures. How about 2,000 people?

You get the idea.
So everyone should be banned from selling Ron Paul memorabilia?
 
Maybe so, but it is not like they are being misleading. They state who they are on the front page and make it abundantly clear on the donate page.

If people still think it's the official campaign site, then I guess Darwin's law is well in effect at that point.

I didn't say it was misleading. I said they should redirect to Paul's campaign website until the campaign is over.
 
So everyone should be banned from selling Ron Paul memorabilia?

Where did I come anywhere close to suggesting that?

I said they should redirect to Paul's campaign website, if legally possible, to direct funds and traffic to where they are needed most.
 
That's not how businesses work.

Are they supporters? Check
Using his name for traffic and money? Check
Using his old official campaign youtube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers? Check

They get a lot of traffic that would help Paul significantly - traffic from people who are mostly looking for Paul's official website.
 
The owners of ronpaul.com should redirect to Ron's campaign site. ronpaul.com is farming money from Paul's popularity. If I had to guess I'd say it's in the six figures.

ronpaul.com is getting about half the traffic of Paul's official campaign site. 200,000 unique visitors last month. How many of them mistakenly donated to that grassroots site?

Not cool.

OMG - panic all the money isn't going into the big campaign black hole.

And oh btw, that is just another example of big campaign mismanagement cause they are too inept to build a website that ranks and mismanaged the net assets. More reasons why Ron should fire certain campaign staff.
 
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I'm new to RP this year. I wouldn't donate because I found so many "Ron Paul" sites. After about 6 months, I eventually found this site and trusted someone here that told me where official donations were supposed to go. The OP makes a good point. Not sure much can be done about it.
 
How to get the official site in first place:

If you have a website on Ron Paul, link to the official home page from your home page. If you know people who have a Ron Paul site, convince them to link to it. Does anyone know the www.ronpaul.com people? If so pressure them in putting that link on their home page. If daily paul or rpf doesn't have a link on their home page, they should. It would actually be good to have a link as part of the main navigation. Maybe next to New Posts? It could be "Official Ron Paul website". If you like the idea, contact a moderator.

These links would help Google understand which site has the most relevance associated with Ron Paul as a search term.
 
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