A popular website for the former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina went live on Monday morning, as she announced her candidacy for president.

Except it wasn’t a campaign site at all.

CarlyFiorina.org is not much more than a listicle of frowny emoticons – one for every employee laid off during Fiorina’s six-year tenure at HP. (You have to scroll down quite a ways to find the final tally: 30,000.)

But the site did go much more viral than Fiorina’s official CarlyForPresident.com – and is just the latest URL to be caught trolling in the name of Republicans.

The culprit behind the Fiorina prank site is Michael Link, assistant director of digital strategy at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“It was a personal project,” Link told the Guardian in a brief phone interview Monday.

He declined to comment beyond what he’d already told The Hill – that the site had nothing to do with his professional life. When asked if there would be any repercussions for the side project at his day job, Link said: “No.”

Fiorina is not alone among the crowded field of White House bidders getting bested by bidders for domain names: TedCruzforAmerica.com redirects to the Healthcare.gov website, a joke the Texas senator, who has sworn to “repeal Obamacare”, probably doesn’t find funny.

The emoticons represent the 30,000 Fiorina laid off at HP when she was in charge. Photograph: Internet

And JebBushforPresident.com is a site run by a couple of guys from Oregon with the stated goal of fostering awareness of gay issues – again, not really of a piece with Bush’s views, although it’s sometimes difficult to tell what those are.

HillaryforPresident.com redirects to the website of a much less probable contender for president than Hillary Clinton: Dr Larry Kawa, an orthodondist in Boca Raton, Florida.

Peter Shankman, a marketing expert and author of the book Zombie Loyalists, said the fake site for Fiorina hurt her more than squatters sitting on her competition’s domains.

“Cruz we expected, because it’s Cruz,” he said. “But Fiorina ran HP! Go look up the list of the first hundred domain names ever registered and I guarantee you HP is on there.”

Indeed, on a list of the first 100 still-active domain names ever registered on the internet, HP.com is the ninth-oldest, having been bought in 1986.

A campaign team that fails to purchase all permutations of its candidate’s name as even a potential redirected domain is not likely to have repercussions with voters directly, Shankman said. But it might be a more serious problem for backers trying to decide which horse to bankroll in the upcoming election.

“The people who are donating money will look at that as a clear warning sign,” he said. “It’s like spelling something wrong on a cover letter or a resume.”

While some prank-squatters have an axe to grind, others are simply looking for a payout: ElectHillary.com was at auction for some $295,000 last year. The proceeds went to Janet LaCelle, a 66-year-old retired GE factory worker, a probable Clinton voter, she told CNN. But not a donor, presumably.

Link did not want to elaborate on his motivations, but the bottom of his website expresses a clear point of view: “That’s 30,000 people she laid off,” reads the page, under the multitude of frowny faces.

“People with families. And what does she say she would have done differently? ‘I would have done them all faster.’ “–Carly Fiorina”