Alexa dot Con -- another "respected" info source ignores Kucinich

Just got this from the Kucinich campaign. Here's yet MORE PROOF that his campaign is being trivialized. Despite the fact that, according to Alexa, DK's website is among the top three campaign sites it ranks, it's not included on their page comparing presidential web sites (although Hillary Clinton's non-candidate site IS-- WTF?).

If Kucinich backers come across as frustrated or angry at times, here's yet another reason why.

===============================================================

Respected Source of Data on Website Traffic Shows Kucinich Site in Close 3-Way Contest for Lead, But Same Company Excludes Kucinich Site from its Reporting on Campaign Sites

For Immediate Release: December 5, 2003

Alexa.com, a leading internet company that serves as a source of information on the strength of websites' activity, is deliberately excluding from its reporting the Kucinich website, despite the fact that, according to Alexa.com's own numbers, the Kucinich site receives more traffic than do several of the other sites that Alexa reports on. This is not an accidental omission. The Kucinich campaign has repeatedly called the matter to the attention of Alexa.com and its parent company, Amazon.com.

Alexa.com is often cited in media reports as an index of which campaigns appear to have popular support, as in these stories from the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2003/11/04/clark_claims_to_be_the_big_hit_online/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/17/MN87856.DTL

The Kucinich for President website at www.kucinich.us receives considerably more traffic than do those for President George Bush, Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, Senator Joe Lieberman, Congressman Dick Gephardt, Ambassador Carol Mosley Braun, or Reverend Al Sharpton. The Kucinich site is in third place and in a close battle for the lead with the sites of General Wesley Clark and Governor Howard Dean. This is based on the rankings that can be found on Alexa.com at

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.kucinich.us/

Alexa also has a page comparing the presidential campaign sites. This page is prominently linked at the top of the main Alexa.com page at www.alexa.com . It excludes any data on the Kucinich site, and does not even include the Kucinich site in its list of sites. It does include several campaign sites with lower rankings, including Senator Hillary Clinton's despite her not being a candidate. The data on the Kucinich site provided above is much more difficult to locate on Alexa's site.

Kucinich supporters have complained about this to Alexa for weeks with no results. Alexa told the Kucinich campaign on December 1st that it would correct this page. The Kucinich campaign contacted both Alexa and its parent company, Amazon.com, on December 4 to again request the correction. This page, which apparently excludes Kucinich as a matter of official policy, is at http://pages.alexa.com/features/candidates.html

The Kucinich campaign has redesigned its website and provided faster loading pages, and has added many popular new features in the past weeks, including areas for supporters to post their reasons for joining the campaign; an area for supporters to post their opinions on NAFTA; a photo gallery; an audio gallery; a video gallery; an opportunity to purchase Kucinich's book or to purchase videos; a page of free holiday E-cards to send to friends and family; a place to sign up to travel to Iowa or New Hampshire; and what the campaign calls Reality-Based Fundraising, i.e. opportunities to contribute money to specific projects, including billboards, yard signs, and interns. The site is updated almost every day with statements from the candidate, and also includes a popular discussion forum where supporters' conversations are guided by a fulltime staff person with the title Virtual Outreach Coordinator. The Kucinich campaign, unlike others, has purchased no advertisements on the internet.

Webmaster Karen Kilroy and Virtual Outreach Coordinator Claudia Slate are available to comment on this success.

Kucinich isn't being deliberately marginalized!

The people don't care about him, obviously. Or else he'd have lots of money & his poll numbers would be soaring. /sarcasm

:eyes:


Thanks for posting this, NNNS. I'm not one bit surprised. :)

An article about the candiates books and stuff, and Kucinich's one was the only one they didnt show, they talked about it all right but there was no photo of it like the others. Plus an article about religion and hes not mentioned, :eyes:, hes known for being a religious guy yet he didnt get mentioned, thats kinda odd IMO.

that unless you are aware of what they are doing...which is basically "disappearing him"...you just take it in stride & go on.

Don't show his book photo...don't mention his website....give him less time at debates...don't put any headlines with the name Kucinich on the front page...don't mention him at all unless you label him as lower tier, no money. no supporters....I could go on and on and most average folks don't even realize how they are being manipulated......

sad, isn't it? The best candidate who can help the most people and they don't even want to mention his name.

Yeah, I can't imagine why Kucinich supporters might get frustrated &angry!!!

We need to send our voices loud and clear...even if its talking to the guy on the bus....in the checkout line....little by little...

DR

Talking ESPECIALLY to those who are too stressed and overwhelmed by just getting by from one day to another will help immeasurably.

That's our end-run around the corporo-whore media, and I'm oh-so-very happy to do it! :)

It's par for the course, and predictable as can be.

The media is all but 100% united against him, and as time passes those that argue that this is not the case will have a harder time denying it. That doesn't mean they won't continue to deny it, but the reasoning will become more and more convoluted.

He's the real deal, a leader for the PEOPLE, and as that's the case 'they' have to do everything in their power to prevent his ascension. Part of looking after their own interests, as it were.

But God bless 'im, he keeps fighting the good fight. And in so doing, he inspires us all to do the same. :)

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=medium&url=http://www.kucinich.us#top

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=homestarrunner.com

Regardless of this, even if a lot of people are visiting Kucinich's website, he is having a hard time getting to donate to his campaign, and more importantly, convincing them to vote for him. He has been stuck at the bottom of every single poll with between 0% and 3%.

He has been successful in cultivating a large grassroots base of support, but it does not appear that that base has really done him any good.

Is HomestarRunner's site a PRESIDENTIAL campaign site? For that matter, why does Alexa list Hillary Clinton's site as a presidential campaign site, despite the fact that she IS NOT A CANDIDATE?

Your mentality and reliance on the "polls" is exactly what's wrong with this country: What about the fact that he came in 2nd in MoveOn.org's poll, despite being ignored by the media? Or how about the fact he won THREE consecutive Newsday online polls, all of which "disappeared" with no explanation without ANY kind of announcement?

What about the fact that Kucinich's book was solidly in the Top Ten for best sellers? Or the fact that he overwhelmingly won Univision's poll after the New Mexico debate? Or the fact that he gets the longest and loudest ovations at the debates?

These results dispute the notion that DK is only at 1-3% right now. As 90% of Americans cannot name even ONE of the nine Democratic candidates, they are still little more than name recognition polls. Even in Iowa, where they'll be caucusing in one month, there's STILL almost 30% who are undecided about who they will support.

In my experiences phone-calling potential caucus-goers in Iowa, only three names have been mentioned, other than the 40% that have been undecided: Dean, Gephart, and Kucinich. In Minnesota, he has the largest, most active campaign organization. In MeetUp.com, only Dean had greater numbers of registrants for political groups before Clark entered the race. There's no way in hell your "polls" are as reliable as you claim.

Your candidate has gotten a relatively free ride from big media, because he is just "outside"-looking and -acting enough to be the "renegade" candidate, despite his corporate-friendly DLC-esque record and views.

The media powers are not afraid of Dean, because he would do little (if anything) to break up their monopolies and their control on what gets printed or said. Why else would top executives at (AOL) Time Warner contribute to his campaign? Would it REALLY be in their best interest to support a candidate who would threaten their existence?

The media has effectively set Dean as the left boundary of the "liberal" candidates, and has effectively marginalized the ones who are actually speaking the truth about what's wrong with this country, and how to fix it.

It is the media's job to "manufacture consent", as Chomsky and Herman put it, and they are doing just that with this race, as they have in the past. They are not afraid of Dean, Kerry, Gephart, Liebermann, etc. because these men would do NOTHING to challenge the status quo.

You do realize that these statistics are derived from the web surfing habits of only people who have installed Alexa's spyware?

The reason he probably was not included is because he is not considered a serious candidate. The same reason that Lyndon LaRouche was not included.

The evil corporate media seems to be sufficiently unafraid of Kucinich ot include him in all of the debates. If they were really afraid of him, they would have excluded him from the beginning as LaRouche was.

You may not believe the polls, but isn't it odd that every single poll conducted show Kucinich with less than 4% support? Not all of these polls are conducted by media organizations. Many are done by colleges and universities. So if these polls are cooked, it would require a massive conspiracy between numerous newspapers, broadcast TV networks, cable TV networks, and academic institutions.

Whatever you think of Kucinich personally, or however you personally interpret his standing in the polls, is not the point, not one bit.

Mentioned in the press release is the FACT that at least TWO mainstream, widely read newspapers from large cities have mentioned the Alexa rankings while discussing candidates.

The FACT that these articles were able to once again marginalize Dennis Kucinich is inarguable.

If Alexa rankings are mentioned, the correct ranking information should be available for reporters to use in their stories / editorials.

I know I, for one, will be contacting the authors and editors of those to pieces to let them know that they should consider running a follow-up piece in order to reflect the correct information. :)

Kucinich may only have 3% in some polls...but he'll take at least 10% in the caucus/primaries.

Sure one poll may not be reliable, but every single one is showing DK with less than 4%. Every single one.

First of all, check who the polls regularly select: registered Democrats, or people who voted Democratic in the last election. Most of DK's support is coming from lapsed Democrats (people who either have not voted or didn't vote Democratic last election) and from 3rd party supporters who recognize DK as the embodiment of what the Democrats used to stand for, before they started selling their souls for money.

As I stated before, the polls are misleading. They always tend to skew toward the affluent who have phones and who are available at prime polling times (weekday evenings and weekends). Many of DK's supporters (like most low-paying service job holders) work long or odd hours, where they are not at home when the polling firms are making their calls.

Also, how can you square up something like this with a last place ranking in the polls?
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/12/05/3fd0374101365

The above story is not just an isolated incident-- I've participated in at least one DK rally where we had between 1400 to 2000 attendees (low and high estimates according to the press) on a weekday night, a day before Al Franken gave a speech. It was hardly "noticed" by most of the press, although a similar rally by Clark pulled only 200 people, and received coverage all weekend by the local press.

Also, remember Jesse Jackson in 1988? He was a non-contender and not on the map in Iowa, yet somehow he finished third in the caucuses. Why didn't the polls see this?

Or how about Bill Clinton in 1992, or Jimmy Carter in 1976? The polls didn't even have them in the running in Iowa, yet somehow they both WON. Love those polls, huh?

So please don't trot out the polls and claim they're the end of the debate. They've been wrong before, they're wrong now, and they'll be wrong in the future.

Alexa has fixed its candidate listings (see the left sidebar). DK is now mentioned in the top four, and is mentioned in the commentary on the page.

For those who haven't seen it yet, here's the graph:

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=350&h=300&z=3&r=45d&u=deanforamerica.com/&u=clark04.com/&u=www.kucinich.us/&u=www.johnedwards2004.com/

Things are looking up...