Google indexed a tweet critical of TotalEnergies that ended up in the meta description tag of the energy giant’s official website.
“Total is not only a profiteer of the crisis: its profits are made on human lives by supplying fuel to Russian planes […]This incriminating assertion, shared Thursday, August 25 in a tweet by the deputy La France Insoumise (LFI) Manon Aubry, found itself integrated into the meta-description tag of the TotalEnergies website.
Embarrassing for the French company, this situation observed this Thursday, September 1, is the fact of Google. Initially, Total simply replied to the tweet. But the latter also appeared in the feed dedicated to social networks present on the home page of the multinational’s website.
The homepage was then indexed by Google and the tweet was displayed as a search result on the “Total” query. According to Sylvain Laneyrie, SEO director at the Eskimoz agency, TotalEnergies tried to delete the incriminated message as well as the Twitter feed affiliated with the home page of its site. In vain. “They especially asked for the indexing of the page by Google, finally I imagine”, he supposes. TotalEnergies reacted this Thursday, September 1st.
“Since this morning, for some web searches, the description of our website contains erroneous words. This is NOT the result of a hack but rather of the indexing by Google of a tweet mentioning us with these words. Corrective actions have been taken.”