TurboTax Deliberately Hides Its Free File Page From Search Engines

"The makers of TurboTax as well as H&R Block promised the IRS to offer free filing for many Americans. But they’re keeping Google from seeing it...

Intuit has done that by adding code on its site telling Google and other search engines not to list TurboTax Free File in search results.

The code in question, which can be found in a file called robots.txt or in an HTML tag, has to be actively added to a site, as Intuit has done. It is typically used on pages that designers want to hide from the open internet, such as those that are for internal use only...

The code on TurboTax’s Free File site says “noindex,nofollow” — instructions for it not to show up in search results.

In contrast, the TurboTax page that puts many users on track to pay signals to Google that it should be listed in search results..."

https://www.propublica.org/article/...-hides-its-free-file-page-from-search-engines