Page set to noindex

What it is

The page’s robots meta tag includes noindex, for example <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. The page stays reachable, but search engines that honour the rule leave it out of their index, so it cannot appear in search results. That is right for thank-you pages, account screens, internal search results or test pages, and costly on a page meant to attract visitors.

Why it matters

Google drops a page with noindex from its results once it crawls the page and reads the rule, even when other sites link to it, and a page must be indexed to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode . Assistants that answer from a search index are likely to lose the page as well. Frequent accidents are a staging setting carried over at launch, a CMS switch that hides the whole site from search, or a template that marks a full section noindex.

How Asky checks it

Asky reads every robots and googlebot meta tag in the page’s raw HTML, in the head or the body and with the name in any letter case, splits their combined content at commas and spaces and reports the page when one value is noindex, in any letter case. Tags for other crawlers and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header are not read, so a noindex set only there goes unreported. The value none, which also means noindex, is reported as its own issue, and noindex, nofollow raises this issue, the nofollow issue and the none issue together.

Reported as a warning with high severity.

How to fix it

Decide whether this page should appear in search.
To leave it as it is: if the page is meant to stay out, such as a thank-you page, a gated download or a duplicate campaign version, mark the issue resolved.
Otherwise remove noindex from every robots and googlebot tag, and nofollow with it if it is there. Indexing is the default, so if no other rule remains you can delete the tag.
Find where it is set: a site-wide switch (in WordPress, Settings, Reading, “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”), the page’s advanced settings in an SEO plugin, the CMS page settings, or head custom code. If a template sets it, fix the template.
Check the server’s response headers for an X-Robots-Tag: noindex too, since Asky does not read headers.
Do not block the page in robots.txt: Google has to crawl it to see that the noindex is gone. In Search Console, URL Inspection can request a new crawl.

Example

https://example.com/blog/pricing-guide was published with a noindex left over from review:


<!-- Before -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
 
<!-- After: the tag is removed, or states the defaults -->
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">

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