McCain grabs top Google ad spot for searches on Joe Biden

DENVER--If you thought that the Republican Party would try to overshadow the Democratic convention this week and the attention paid to Barack Obama's choice of a running mate, you'd be right. Just do a search on Google.

As The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, the McCain campaign has nabbed the top ad spot on Google for the search terms "Joe Biden" and "Biden." Presumably it outbid the Democrats for the top spot.

The ad that appeared reads, "What Does Joe Biden Say About Barack Obama? Find Out Today!" and takes searchers to a page on McCain's site with a 30-second ad showing Biden in a debate saying that Obama is not ready to be president, followed by a clip of the Delaware senator saying he would be honored to run with McCain because "the country would be better off."

By around 1 p.m. PDT, the ad at the top of the page had disappeared and a McCain ad had been moved to a less-visible position on the right side of the page, below the one from the actual Obama-Biden campaign.

The McCain camp was the highest bidder for ad space tied to the Biden terms and has also bought search ads for terms like "U.S. economy" and "housing crisis."

This is an offline effort as well. Just a couple of miles away from Invesco Field, where Obama is scheduled to accept the nomination to be the Democratic presidential candidate on Thursday night, a plane circled overhead this week pulling a banner that reads, "Biden was right--Obama not ready."