Tim Tagaris makes an excellent observation, pointing out that politicians should be as concerned with Google as they are with yard signs. He lists Google results for Martin Frost and Tim Roemer, two men who have thrown their hats into the ring for the DNC chairmanship, and most of them are negative articles opining on why neither of the men is fit for the position. To add insult to injury:
This doesn't even include the fact that you see advertisements for Donnie Fowler and Simon Rosenberg on the right-hand-side of the Google results page. ...And yes -- there is a blog ad for Donnie, Simon AND someone who placed a blog ad with the question, "Are You Happy Bush Won? Respond Now And You Can Get A Free Laptop!"
The point of advertising, endorsements, and yard signs is to create the impression that everyone is talking about you, everyone likes you, and everyone wants you in the job. If the top ten Google results on your name are all negative, everyone is going to know exactly the opposite.
Getting high in the Google ranks for your own name is hard (especially if you have a common name like Michael Williams, though I'm now number one), but if you can't get anyone to write anything favorable about you at least go to the trouble of buying advertising keyed to your name. You can sure bet that if you don't, your opponents will.
What's more, I can't find a single large corporation that isn't the number one hit for its own name. If people chasing dollars are doing it, so should be people chasing votes.
This is only kind of on topic, but I just googled my married name and came up with absolutely no hits regarding me that I could find. When searching my maiden name the top hit isn't me (It's so weird that someone else in the world has that name) but most of the hits listed are regarding me. My new last name seems to really mess up the search results.
When I search on my married name, I get lots of hits for a porn actress with the same last name. Evidently she's got more, ahem, exposure than I do...