Google Search Console returning "No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag", despite having "noindex" in robots.txt

user_11609748 0
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I am trying to index a site, on Google search console, while inspecting a url, it says "REQUEST INDEXING"

When I do that "No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag" is displayed as error for not indexing.

This is my robots.txt:

User-agent: *
noindex:
Sitemap: http://www.mywebsitehere.com/sitemap_index.xml

I on Wordpress hosting.

I have tried the robots tester on previous version of Google search console, it says "ALLOWED" for the/all links.

google-search-console robots.txt wordpress indexing html
2 Answers

The noindex rule isn't officially supported by Google:

In the interest of maintaining a healthy ecosystem and preparing for potential future open source releases, we're retiring all code that handles unsupported and unpublished rules (such as noindex) on September 1, 2019.

Alternatively, you can:

  • Noindex in robots meta tags: Supported both in the HTTP response headers and in HTML, the noindex directive is the most effective way to remove URLs from the index when crawling is allowed.
  • 404 and 410 HTTP status codes: Both status codes mean that the page does not exist, which will drop such URLs from Google's index once they're crawled and processed.
  • Password protection: Unless markup is used to indicate subscription or paywalled content, hiding a page behind a login will generally remove it from Google's index.
  • Disallow in robots.txt: Search engines can only index pages that they know about, so blocking the page from being crawled usually means its content won’t be indexed. While the search engine may also index a URL based on links from other pages, without seeing the content itself, we aim to make such pages less visible in the future.
  • Search Console Remove URL tool: The tool is a quick and easy method to remove a URL temporarily from Google's search results.

Source: A note on unsupported rules in robots.txt | Google Webmaster Central Blog.

user_91319610

If the URL Inspection report displays the following message: No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag, it’s a single checkbox setting in the backend of WordPress that’s causing all this ruckus.

To unblock search engines from indexing your website, do the following:

Log in to WordPress Go to Settings → Reading Scroll down the page to where it says “Search Engine Visibility” Uncheck the box next to “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” Hit the “Save Changes” button

user_119497950
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