Herman Cain Fights Allegations with Paid Search Results
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain isn’t running around the social media world with the most fans or followers, but with a significant amount of momentum compared to his polling peers.
However, new allegations of sexual harassment have forced the Cain campaign to put a little more activity into a different social realm on the Web: Paid search results. According to the New York Times, the Cain campaign has taken to purchasing Google keywords related to both the candidate and those involved in said allegations.
This practice ensures that the first link users see when searching for phrases like, “Sharon Bialek,” one of Cain’s accusers, isn’t a news story or some other account of the allegations. Rather, it’s Cain’s own website: caintruth.com, otherwise titled, “Truth About Herman Cain - Get Past the Allegations and Lies.”
And this isn’t just a website set up by supporters of Cain: The candidate himself is taking part.
“Unfortunately, the media-driven process by which one must seek this opportunity is fundamentally unserious. I have touched on this before - the emphasis on ‘gaffes,’ gotcha questions and time devoted to trivial nonsense - and everyone knows the process only became further detached from relevance this week as the media published anonymous, ancient, vague personal allegations against me,” wrote Cain on the site.
“Once this kind of nonsense starts, the media’s rules say you have to act in a certain way. I am well aware of these rules. And I refuse to play by them,” he added.