I was doing some research on Alexa.com for a site I am marketing and decided to check out the traffic trends of some of the top presidential candidates websites.
I looked at HillaryClinton.com (Democrat), BarackObama.com (Democrat), Rudy Giuliani (JoinRudy2008.com Republican), MittRomney.com (Republican), and RonPaul2008.com (Republican).
The candidates with the most significant traffic scores were Hillary, Barack, and Ron Paul. The rest of the candidate’s websites had less traffic. In order to keep the chart readable I have removed all sites except Hillary’s, Barack’s and Ron’s, but feel free to check the other candidates sites yourselves to verify what I am reporting.

The Blue represents Ron Paul, Yellow is Hillary Clinton, and Red is Barack Obama. I have added lines to represent the average trend for the past 3 months. You’ll notice that Ron Paul is the only candidate with an upward trend.
Please note that Hillary received a huge bump from the release of the Sopranos Parody Video around June 17th. It is a great example of viral marketing online, and I definitely give her campaign staff credit for a job well done, but this is a short term bump created by a single viral campaign, not a trend.
Now let me quickly point out some obvious differences between Hillary, Obama, and Ron Paul.
As of the first Quarter of this year Hillary reported $36,000,000 in her war chest. Barack reported roughly $25,000,000. Ron Paul reported a paltry $650,000.
This just goes to show that Ron Paul internet popularity isn’t because he has paid millions of dollars for viral marketing and video campaigns. He is popular because his message is naturally Viral. Watch some of the real video’s of Ron Paul in action and you might see for yourself why he is so widely popular online, despite receiving a fraction of the main stream media coverage the “front-runners” receive.
I think it’s also worthy to note that Ron experienced tremendous jumps in traffic after each of the three republican debates. He is not just popular on the internet, every time he is heard in a major forum, his popularity grows compared to those around him. Will he ever break into the mainstream? Will corporate controlled media outlets with political interests ever allow Ron Paul to be heard?
Btw, You can always count on San Francisco to be ahead of the times. Here’s a great article from the San Fransisco Chronicle referencing Ron Paul’s popularity on Technorati and Youtube..
Technorati Tags: Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Politics