An innovative Google advertising tactic helped Virginia state legislator Creigh Deeds clinch Tuesday night's Democratic gubernatorial primary victory. Starting Monday afternoon, the Deeds campaign launched a Google network blast (sometimes called a Google "surge") to capitalize on his weekend gains in the polls and get out the vote for Election Day, according to an email from a Google spokeswoman. His display ads, which encouraged Virginians to "vote today" and referenced a Washington Post endorsement, reached over 80 percent of people online in Northern Virginia on top sites like WashingtonPost.com and WSJ.com.

The ads were geo-targeted, which means they were only visible to people in Northern Virginia or Washington, DC proper (to capture people that work in the District but live in Virginia). Deeds also recently pulled ahead of his rivals in terms of volume of searches on Google. Searches for his name first surpassed former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and state legislator Brian Moran on May 29 and, as of June 5, searches for Deeds were up more than 25 percent compared to McAuliffe, Google said. Deeds will face Republican Bob McDonnell in November.