Joe Biden’s official 2020 campaign page is nowhere to be found on the first page of Google with the term “Joe Biden”. Its parody version instead – featuring the former vice-president touching women and children – is doing pretty well on Google and Bing, especially for the search term “Joe Biden website”.
The parody website, JoeBiden.info, ridicules the Democratic front-runner pointing to the allegations made by some women that he touched them in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.
“Joe Biden has a good feel for the American people and knows exactly what they really want deep down,” reads the parody site. “He’s happy to open up and reveal himself to voters and will give a pounding to anybody who gets in his way!”
When asked about this, Biden’s campaign didn’t respond to comment.
However, it’s clear that Biden’s official campaign is having some technical issues, despite its conspicuous spending on Google. According to a tracker maintained by the advertising firm ACRONYM, the campaign spent over $360,000 on Google platforms – more than all the other candidates with the exception made for Sen. Bernie Sanders and South Bend’s mayor Pete Buttigieg.
CNBC submitted an inquiry to the parody website through its contact form. Its creator, that remains anonymous, said that he had not been contacted by any candidate or organization about the website.
“I would assume Biden’s campaign knows about it though by now,” he wrote. “I get thousands of Biden supporters coming to the site every day who fail to realize that it is a parody — asking for volunteer information, donation information, suggestions on how to handle the [Anita Hill] situation, or criticizing his use of ‘All men are created equal’ — no joke.”
He continues explaining that the website gained a good amount of traffic from Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, especially on April Fool’s day. “I think these factors combined with good [search engine optimization] practices resulted in it ranking very well on Google and Bing,” he added.
The person, the owner of other parody domains related to Sen. Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker, wrote that the Biden parody was the “most viral”, and they haven’t paid to advertise the website. The only monetary effort was a minimum amount spent to buy the domain.
As noted by journalist Jonathan Walczak in his 25th of April tweet, “the surprise here is not that someone is trolling Biden, but that his official site is nowhere to be seen on the first page of results for prominent ‘Biden 2020’ search phrases, and that a derogatory parody page shows up at the top,” journalist Jonathan Walczak wrote in an April 25 tweet.
