Pete Quily has put together a case study on the search and social results of the Barack Obama and John McCain online presence among Google, Google News, Image and Video Search, Technorati, Wordpress and Yahoo along with subscriber numbers from Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Friend Feed.

Key findings include :

• Obama’s site had over 1 million pages indexed in Google, 5828% more than McCain
• Obama’s site had 25% more pages linking to it than McCain’s
• McCain has 173% more mentions on Google News
• Obama has 2254% more Twitter Followers

The numbers are pretty interesting and make a good case for the importance of social media marketing not only for Presidential Candidates, but also for business online presence and social media management.

Maybe next time you pitch social media marketing and reputation management to your CEO, show them some of these numbers which show how a smart Internet marketing campaign led to someone winning the White House, and how a business can learn from this, build a social following and brand loyal community, and leverage that community when needed.

Source:  Search Engine Journal Loren Baker, Editor