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Meta Robots Checker

Check whether a page is set to noindex, in the HTML or in the headers.

Free, no signup. We fetch the page once and read what your server sends back.

Fetching the page…

What this checks

This is the single most valuable check on a page that will not rank. A stray noindex, usually left behind after a site launch, removes a page from search completely while everything else about it looks perfectly healthy.

  • meta robots tag
  • meta googlebot tag
  • X-Robots-Tag response header
  • Whether the page is indexable

How to act on the result

  • If this reports noindex on a page you want ranked, that is your entire problem.
  • Check the header as well as the HTML. Many people only look at the tag.
  • A new site launched from staging is the classic case. Search the codebase for noindex after every launch.

Frequently asked

What does noindex do?

It tells search engines not to include the page in results. It is respected reliably by Google, and it is the correct way to keep a page out of search.

What is the difference between noindex and robots.txt disallow?

noindex keeps a page out of the index but requires the page to be crawlable so the directive can be seen. robots.txt disallow stops crawling, which paradoxically can leave the page indexed without a description.

What does nofollow in meta robots mean?

It tells search engines not to follow any links on the page. It is rarely appropriate sitewide.

Can a header noindex a page?

Yes. X-Robots-Tag does the same job at the server level and is easy to overlook because it never appears in the page source.

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