It turns out that the lawmaker claimed that ``My site is not displayed in Google search due to the conspiracy of Deep State,'' but it was only blocked by meta tags



Mark Finchem , a member of the Arizona State Legislature in the United States, claimed that 'the reason my election campaign site is not displayed in Google search results is due to the Deep State algorithm.' However, it turned out that it was not actually a deep state conspiracy, but a meta tag that blocked search indexing in the website's source code.

Mark Finchem says Google is blocking his campaign site.
https://www.grid.news/story/misinformation/2022/10/07/mark-finchem-says-google-and-the-deep-state-are-blocking-his-campaign-site-the-truth- is-simpler-and-implicates-his-own-team/

Arizona GOP Secretary Of State Candidate Insists 'Deep State' Google Is Blocking His Website; Turns Out He Requested It Not Be Indexed | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/07/arizona-gop-secretary-of-state-candidate-insists-deep-state-google-is-blocking-his-website-turns-out-he- requested-it-not-be-indexed/

Mr. Finchem, who belongs to the Republican Party, is one of the politicians who claims that there was fraud in the 2020 US presidential election in which former President Donald Trump was defeated, and is also known for many conspiracy theory remarks. It's a person. In the primary election held in Arizona in August 2022, he was supported by Mr. Trump and was elected as the Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State .



In October 2022, Mr. Finchem said, ``Google and California scammers refuse to rank my website in the Deep State algorithm. Please share the link,'

he posted on Twitter . The Deep State is a conspiracy theory that the US federal government, financial institutions, and industry have organized a secret network that exercises power at the heart of the United States.



A few days later it said, 'Google can't find my website. We are censoring the candidate website. Please share and link this widely, ”he

tweeted , repeating the claim that his website was excluded from Google search due to a conspiracy.



In response to these remarks, overseas media Grid News searched for Mr. Finchem's

election campaign site , and it certainly could not be found by Google search. So when I examined the source code of the website, it turned out that a meta tag called `` noindex '' that blocks search indexing of the website was embedded through AIOSEO , a WordPress SEO plugin.



Web pages with noindex inserted are not registered in search engine databases, so they will not be displayed in search results. In other words, it was not a conspiracy that Mr. Finchem's election website was not displayed in the search results, it was just that the inserted meta tag was working properly.

Will Adler, senior technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology , a digital rights group, said: ``There are two possibilities here. Another possibility is that the website was intentionally set not to be indexed, and Finchem blamed it on 'algorithms.' It's a possibility,' he points out.

According to Adler, the software that Finchem's team seems to have used does not insert 'noindex' unless 'No' is selected for the 'Show in search results' option. 'Frankly, I think it's weird to set that up when you're running an election campaign,' Adler commented.

Also, when Grid News examined the website archives, it is known that the 'noindex' tag was not inserted from the beginning, but was inserted between mid-July and August 1, 2022. .

Mr. Finchem did not respond to Grid News' inquiry, but a Google spokesperson replied that Mr. Finchem's claim was false. A spokesperson said, ``The webmaster of this site has instructed Google and other search engines not to include this page in search results using the 'noindex' directive.' If you prefer, you can remove the 'noindex' directive.'

A few hours after Grid News published an article about the series of findings, the 'noindex' tag was removed from Mr. Finchem's website and it began to appear in search results. At the time of writing the article, the database ranking was not high, so even if you searched for 'Mark Finchem site', it was not displayed until the 4th page, but if you include 'votefinchem' which is part of the URL, it is the top of the 1st page. It will be displayed in.



The following is Mr. Finchem's election campaign site, but the source code has already been modified at the time of writing the article.

Mark Finchem for Secretary of State Just Follow The Law
https://votefinchem.com/



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