Geary Danley was not the gunman in Las Vegas who killed at least 50 people late Sunday. But for hours on the far-right Internet, would-be sleuths scoured Danley's Facebook likes, family photographs and marital history to try to "prove" that he was.

Danley, according to an archived version of a Facebook page bearing that name, might have been married to a Marilou Danley. Police were looking for a woman by that name in the hours after the shooting, but later said they did not think she was involved. To name someone as a mass murderer based on that evidence would be irresponsible and dangerous. But that's exactly what a portion of the far-right Internet did overnight.

The briefest look at the viral threads and tweets falsely naming Geary Danley as the attacker makes it easy to guess why a bunch of right-wing trolls latched on to him: His Facebook profile indicated that he might be a liberal.

Authorities have since identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, 64, who was later found dead in a hotel room on the Strip. His motives remain unknown. But the fake Danley story presented a complete, desirable package to the elements of the far-right Internet that spread it. That phony story quickly embedded itself into the algorithms of Google and Facebook, where sites promoting the rumor remained at the top of the results for anyone searching for Danley's name.

In excited all-caps, one anonymous user on 4chan's /pol/ board posted that Danley was a "REGISTERED DEMOCRAT!" The thread spread quickly, as did a crowdsourced wiki page about Danley on Everipedia that, according to its edit history, once said that "Geary opened fired [sic] on the 34th floor of the Mandalay Bay toward a concert happening across the street."

The Everipedia article dedicated an entire section to what it alleged were Danley's political views:

Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People carry a person at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A handout photo released via Twitter by Eiki Hrafnsson (@EirikurH) showing concertgoers running away from the scene (C) after shots range out at the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Eiki Hrafnsson Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People lie on the ground at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A man in a wheelchair is taken away from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People stand on the street outside the Mandalay Bay hotel near the scene of the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Paul Buck Las Vegas shooting – in pictures FBI agents confer in front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting during a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas police run by a banner on the fence at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival grounds after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures An injured person is tended to in the intersection of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Boulevard after a mass shooting at a country music festival Ethan Miller/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Metro Police officers pass by the front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A woman sits on a curb at the scene of a shooting outside of a music festival along the Las Vegas Strip AP/John Locher Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A cowboy hat lays in the street after shots were fired near a country music festival in Las Vegas Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas Metro Police and medical workers stage in the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Sheriff Joe Lombardo (2-R) speaking during a press briefing in the aftermath of the active shooter incident on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA

This narrative, backed by no evidence or confirmation of Danley's involvement in the Las Vegas shooting, spread quickly. That Everipedia post had 77,000 views as of Monday morning, just hours after it was created. It has since been edited and no longer names Danley as the shooter. His personal photos, taken from Facebook, were still plastered all over the page.

But even as those rumors were thoroughly, conclusively debunked, this false narrative was picked up in the algorithms that, increasingly, have come to define a person's public-facing identities. During a search I ran about 9 a.m. Monday, hours after the real shooting suspect -- a different person -- was identified, the entire first page of Google results for a search for Geary Danley's full name were links to news sites, YouTube videos, message boards and even several /pol/ threads repeating the rumor about him. There was one exception: a link to Danley's personal Facebook page. There were no links to debunkings or to any mainstream news outlets that had identified Paddock as the attacker.

And for a time on Monday morning, one of those 4chan threads falsely naming Danley as the shooter was promoted by Google as a "top story" for searches for his name, as one BuzzFeed reporter noticed.

The right-wing news site Gateway Pundit also picked up these rumors as fact in a now-deleted article. That article's URL was still the top result for Danley's name on Google in the early hours of Monday morning. The headline, still visible in search results, and remaining on the first page of results for Danley when I ran my 9 a.m. search, read, "Las Vegas Shooter Reportedly a Democrat Who Liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and Associated with anti-Trump Army."

And on Facebook, a search for articles about Geary Danley promoted seven links leading to inaccurate stories about him. The eighth result is a debunking.