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I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that election day is next Tuesday. Whether you’re observing or you’re breaking out the campaign gear for some hardcore get out the vote effors this weekend, here are some tools to help you keep up with the news and your efforts:

Google Earth

You can download a KML file that lets you search results from past elections, since 1980. The data is broken down and can show you how different regions of the country voted - even by county. I used to work as a political consultant, and let me tell you - this kind of data is heavily relied on. It’s a bit of a late release for campaigns, who already have this data. But it’s great for political junkies.

Google News

Trying to remember what a candidate said on an issue? Just type their name into Google News. If Google has indexed a quote by that person, it will appear on top of the search results in the one box.

Google Mobile

Want to know your precinct location? The Google Mobile team has created a special tool just for that purpose. Go to m.google.com/elections on your mobile phone, type in your address and you’ll be directed to your precinct.

The tool did not point me to early voting locations, which in my state are not the same as Election Day precinct locations.

As cool as that is, always verify with your local elections office. Google even helps you do that. They have a box where you enter your state’s abbreviation, and it will pull up relevant links to voting information.

Yahoo Elections Hub and Political Dashboard

Yahoo makes the most of its successful portal platforms with its Elections Hub and Political Dashboard. The dashboard is a super slick map showing the latest poll results. Hopefully they update it with real time results on election night. I can totally see myself keeping the dashboard open while watching results come in on the tv.

Microsoft Live Search xRank

xRank, Live Search’s buzz tool, has a politician section. It’s no surprise that the Rep and Dem presidential and vice presidential candidates take the top 4 spots today. The rest of the top 20 is filled with senate and gubernatorial races, with Hillary Clinton and George Bush thrown in for good measure.

MSN Election Live Q&A

Q&A is Live Search’s answer product, and over at the MSN Election Guide, you can find the Election Live Q&A. It’s pretty straightforward. You can ask and answer questions about the election in real time.

AOL Elections Toolbar

AOL has a toolbar for IE and Firefox that can keep you up to date with election news. If you like to surf the net while watching TV - this could be an ideal toolbar for you come Tuesday night.

Well, hopefully that’s enough to keep you busy and up to date.

Got any tools to share? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Related Reading:
Obama is Winning the Internet War
ChaCha Selected by Rock the Vote for Mobile Answers

Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it’s on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google’s anti-spam metrics.

One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.

“The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this–log data, IP addresses, and cookie information–makes your search results cleaner and more relevant.”

But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:

“If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn’t notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack.”

Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as “spam.” As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.

Of course, this problem is experienced in the ‘paid links debate’ as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.

What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google’s data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.

More than any previous election, search advertising will influence the vote of the presidential election. Google, in its ever-present planning for the future, planned for this shift when it employed Peter Greenberger as part of its sales team. Greenberger’s job is to convince candidates that advertising on Google search is essential to political success. Recently, ClickZ’s Kate Kaye interviewed Greenberger for his insights into the 2008 election.

Reading Greenberger’s statements, you get the idea that spending on search ads will make or break the election. He attributes the success of John McCain and Barack Obama to their paid search campaigns. Greenberger also points out that Hillary Clinton was inconsistent in her Adwords campaign, dismantling it for the last two quarters of 2007 and starting it up again only after the New Hampshire primary.

Of course, polls during those times showed Clinton with a substantial lead. It wasn’t until after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries that a tight race was clear. Some political analysts have suggested that the ultimate difference between Clinton and Obama was that Clinton’s campaign was focused on a top-down strategy while Obama’s strategy was more grassroots, building from the ground up. Looking at campaign strategies in that light, it makes sense that Obama would engage a response-directed campaign. But Greenberger’s job is to persuade the candidates that Adwords is the chicken and not the egg.

Greenberger also talked about how Obama used geotargeting during the Texas primary and how John McCain is ahead of the game in the use of video ads. Read the full interview with Google’s political ad guy, Peter Greenberger, over at ClickZ

Republican presidential candidate John McCain joked to a small crowd of supporters that he was using Internet search engine Google to research his list of potential vice presidential candidates for his ticket.

“You know, basically it’s a Google,” Mr McCain said, to laughter, when asked how the selection process was going during a 10,000 dollar per person lunch in Richmond, Virginia. “What you can find out now on the internet - it’s remarkable.”

We tend to agree with ClickZ’s Kate Kaye, who interviewed Google political guru Peter Greenberger who concluded Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hampered by its failure to use search advertising consistently throughout the primary season, as both the Obama and McCain campaigns did.

We like the fact that McCain calls Google “a Google” as opposed to President Bush who referred to the search engine giant as “the Google.” It proves he’s much more Internet-savvy.

So who might be on McCain’s short list of candidates?

Based on a Google search for “vice president” there’s the obvious choice:

US House approves prolonged protection for Vice President Cheney - 13 hours ago
WASHINGTON, June 9 (Xinhua) — The US House of Representatives passed a legislation on Monday to prolong the protections for Vice President Cheney

Then there’s Condoleeza Rice, who’s actively campaigning for the slot according to ABC News:

Political Radar: Dan Senor: Condoleezza Rice Is Pursuing the VP Spot
If you don’t like Dr. Rice for Vice President, then you are a liberal …… The Republicans who think that Condi is qualified to be VP or President have to …
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/dan-senor-condo.html -

We like the dark horse candidates found on the bottom of Page One:

Blog Search
Brian Schweitzer for Vice President - The Creature Politic - 20 hours ago
Arianna Huffington for Vice President - Financial Post - Diane Francis - 17 hours ago
Vice President - Flimsy Sanity - Jun 8, 2008

UPDATE: Google Trends is back up and running. We offer our sincere apologies since the #1 search today is: “what to do if inside of girl gets wet.”

We sincerely hope that search is spam. We’re confident it has nothing to do with the #4 hottest search: Brigitte Bardot.

It’s Groundhog Day today at Google Trends. When everyone woke up this morning and checked the hottest stories in Google Labs’ Google Trends service, nothing had changed.

As of publication, none of the fastest rising search terms has changed since yesterday.

Bo Diddley died … yesterday.

Sandro Kopp made the news (yesterday) as actress Tilda Swinton’s boyfriend in her open marriage.

Yesterday it was alleged in a Vanity Fair article that former President Bill Clinton had an affair with actress Gina Gershon (Bound, Showgirls), even though most people spelled her name “Gerson” when searching for who she is.

Frasier star Kelsey Grammer? Had a mild heart attack (yesterday).

The FlavorChase sweepstakes somehow made the Top 10 - even though no media outlets were writing about them.

The Best Life Diet and Skinny Cow fat-free ice cream are yesterday’s news; as is “The Bachelor” Aaron Buerge.

Nickelodeon’s NickArcade.com/dojo also made the Top 10 without support from the news media, which may indicate that the average age of searchers is much lower than Google has ever revealed.

Today’s Hot Trends (USA)
1. bo diddley
2. sandro kopp
3. gina gerson
4. kelsey grammer
5. flavorchase.com
6. skinny cow
7. best life diet
8. the bachelor aaron
9. aaron buerge
10. nickarcade.com/dojo

While this may just be a glitch in the system, we’re hoping the real reason the service paused was to clear out the “trend spammers” who somehow manage to get their sites improbably listed.

Google states:

“With Hot Trends, you can see a snapshot of what’s on the public’s collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of today’s top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S. You can also select a recent date in history to see what the top rising searches were and what the search activity looked like over the course of that day. We update Hot Trends hourly.

UPDATE: Google Trends is back up and running. We offer our sincere apologies since the #1 search today is: “what to do if inside of girl gets wet.”

We sincerely hope that search is spam. We’re confident it has nothing to do with the #4 hottest search: Brigitte Bardot.

It’s Groundhog Day today at Google Trends. When everyone woke up this morning and checked the hottest stories in Google Labs’ Google Trends service, nothing had changed.

As of publication, none of the fastest rising search terms has changed since yesterday.

Bo Diddley died … yesterday.

Sandro Kopp made the news (yesterday) as actress Tilda Swinton’s boyfriend in her open marriage.

Yesterday it was alleged in a Vanity Fair article that former President Bill Clinton had an affair with actress Gina Gershon (Bound, Showgirls), even though most people spelled her name “Gerson” when searching for who she is.

Frasier star Kelsey Grammer? Had a mild heart attack (yesterday).

The FlavorChase sweepstakes somehow made the Top 10 - even though no media outlets were writing about them.

The Best Life Diet and Skinny Cow fat-free ice cream are yesterday’s news; as is “The Bachelor” Aaron Buerge.

Nickelodeon’s NickArcade.com/dojo also made the Top 10 without support from the news media, which may indicate that the average age of searchers is much lower than Google has ever revealed.

Today’s Hot Trends (USA)
1. bo diddley
2. sandro kopp
3. gina gerson
4. kelsey grammer
5. flavorchase.com
6. skinny cow
7. best life diet
8. the bachelor aaron
9. aaron buerge
10. nickarcade.com/dojo

While this may just be a glitch in the system, we’re hoping the real reason the service paused was to clear out the “trend spammers” who somehow manage to get their sites improbably listed.

Google states:

“With Hot Trends, you can see a snapshot of what’s on the public’s collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of today’s top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S. You can also select a recent date in history to see what the top rising searches were and what the search activity looked like over the course of that day. We update Hot Trends hourly.

Kate Kaye at Clickz has done some in-depth analysis of the online ad spending of Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. The Illinois Senator has spent $3.47 million this year in online advertising.

Of that, $2.8 million went to Google while Yahoo received $180,000. Smaller amounts also went to Facebook, CNN.com, Gothamist, and Politico.

Google, of course, dominates the online advertising market, so it’s a smart play by anyone to spend with them. But Google just happens to be number 13 on OpenSecrets.org list of top donors. The list compiles monies donated by corporate political action committees and individuals (who must report who they work for when contributing).

Related Reading:
Presidential Candidates Need Some Help with their Reputations
Clinton, McCain, Obama: Drilling Down on Local in Campaign ‘08

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Seattle is the place to be for Drilling Down on Local Marketplaces this week (April 30 - May 2). For the first time, The Kelsey Group will provide a deep dive into how local search and local media buys will impact political campaigns.

ClickZ Campaign ‘08 editor Kate Kaye (just promoted to ClickZ senior editor), will speak on two panels during the Kelsey Drilling Down Local conference.

Kate’s going to discuss why Buckeye and Lone Star news sites scored big. Of the three main primary contenders, she also found Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has done the most local online advertising, some of it especially innovative. A more compelling local Web effort involved big multimedia ad buys on local news homepages.

Obama is also leading the pack in innovation with expandable video billboard ads.

A few savvy congressional candidates have started to place online ads for this year’s election. You’ll also learn why the majority of congressional, statewide and local candidates lag far behind presidential campaigns when it comes to even considering advertising online.