By Aurelien Breeden

After the United States, Senegal and Egypt it was France’s turn yesterday to get the official Google election treatment with its own dedicated page for election news and information. I decided to pit the American and French pages one against another to see what the similarities and differences were. On the top is the U.S. election page, on the bottom is the France one.

The basic design is very similar: aggregation of news articles in the center, Google + accounts of the candidates on the right, and refined search options (by candidate or theme) on the left.

In green I’ve circled the identical features. Both pages have a specific link towards election coverage on YouTube (which belongs to Google). In both cases the page was created in partnership with a news agency, the Associated Press in the United States and the Agence France Presse in France. However, the former only has a link towards its YouTube election coverage, whereas the latter has an editorial role in selecting the videos that appear on the front page.

In purple I’ve circled similar features with interesting variations. Both pages feature a refined search sidebar for election themes, but the topics differ between France and the U.S. This minor variation reveals small yet insightful cultural differences. Government spending, for instance, is a topic in the U.S., but is nowhere to be seen on the French page.

In red, I’ve circled the striking differences between the two Google election pages. There are clearly more features on the U.S. page than there are on the France one. On the bottom, the American page has a selection of trend graphics using Google Insight. The U.S. election page also features an incredibly detailed agenda created using Google Agenda with PBS Newshour, as well as a “Politics & Elections Toolkit” for political professionals (journalists, consultants, etc.).

These differences give the U.S. election page a stronger added value than the French one. The France election page is a sort of  vamped up Google News, but it doesn’t have any features that would push a user to use this page instead of his regular news source. The U.S. election page, on the other hand, offers completely new functionalities and interesting variations on your traditional Google news feed.

Created by a French Google collaborator, the new Google election page for France was launched a few days ago and additional features might not have been unveiled yet. But so far, I think the YouTube Election 2012 page is a much more slick, finished product. Created by YouTube in collaboration with the AFP but also the CFJ (a French journalism school) and Twitter, this YouTube platform boasts an enormous amount of content, fact-checked interviews and social media trends.

You can discover more about the French Google election page and campaigning in the digital era below, with a video of the conference Google held in partnership with France 24 and RFI to launch the new page. France 24 has a recap of the conference here.