Error Alerts at once indexing.noindex

The page tells search engines not to index it

Why it matters

A noindex directive, in a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag response header, removes the page from search results entirely, however good the rest of it is. It is the classic launch mistake: the staging site's noindex goes live with the new design, and traffic falls away over the following weeks with nothing visibly broken.

Source: Block Search indexing with noindex. It is an error when the page is in your sitemap or is the home page, where it can't be meant; otherwise a warning, because thank-you pages and internal search results are often noindexed on purpose.

How to fix it

If the page should be found in search, remove the directive. In the HTML it looks like this:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

In WordPress it is Settings → Reading → Discourage search engines; SEO plugins also set it per page. If we found it in the X-Robots-Tag header, it is set in your server or CDN configuration. If the page is meant to stay out of search, leave it, and take the page out of your sitemap.

Examples

These are the rule's own test pages, and what it says about each. They are run on every change to the rule book.

<title>A page</title>
<h1>A page</h1>
Asked for
https://www.example.com/thanks
x-robots-tag
googlebot: none

WarningThe page is set to noindex in the X-Robots-Tag response header: it won't appear in search results. If that is deliberate, ignore this.

fail-header-inner
<title>A</title>
<meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX, nofollow">

ErrorThe page is set to noindex in a robots meta tag: it won't appear in search results. This is the home page, so this looks like a mistake.

fail-meta-home
<title>A</title>
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">

PassedNothing tells search engines to keep this page out.

pass-index-follow
<title>A</title>
<meta name="robots" content="max-image-preview:none, max-snippet:-1">
x-robots-tag
bingbot: noindex, max-image-preview:none, unavailable_after: 25 Jun 2030 15:00:00 PST

PassedNothing tells search engines to keep this page out.

pass-other-directives