Author pages not indexed (noindex)

@arjn We’re sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue on your site.

Regarding your question, even if author archive pages are set to be shown in search results in the global settings, they can be set on an individual per author basis in the user profile settings.

To set an individual author pages to be indexed you would need to perform the following steps:

• In WordPress, go to Users>All Users
• Click ‘Edit’ beneath the user to edit
• Scroll down to the ‘Yoast SEO settings’ area
• Uncheck ‘Do not allow search engines to show this author’s archives in search results’
• Click ‘Update Profile’

We also have a guide on this located here: How to noindex individual author pages.

Can you please try the aforementioned suggestions and let us know whether this resolves your issue?

Hi,

thank you for you answer. This setting is already unchecked, for all authors.

Do you have any other idea what could cause this?

Kind regards,

Arjen

Hello Arjen,

If you’ve unchecked ‘Do not allow search engines to show this author’s archives in search results’ for the author with the noindex tag and turned ON Show author archives in search results, I’d expect to see index, follow.

But since this isn’t the case, there might be a plugin conflict. The fastest way to rule out any conflict is to deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme like Twenty Twenty.

Please test this on your development or staging site if you have one. If not, we recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This plugin has a troubleshooting mode, which does not affect normal visitors to your site.

If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process: How to check for plugin conflicts

hi,

thank you for your reply. Using the health check plug-in, all plug-ins are de-activated and a default theme is being used. When I check the header of the author page, there’s no <meta name=”robots”> tag. When I activate the Yoast SEO plug-in (which is then the only plug-in activated), there is the <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”>?tag. So I think there’s no plug-in conflict.

Any others ideas how this can be solved? The only thing that works is creating a post by the author (once again, the ‘post’ post-type is available, but not being used on this site), then the page will get an index, follow for the robots tag,

kind regards,

Arjen

@arjn Thanks for your reply.

Regarding your issue, the only other thing I can think to suggest is for the affected author pages, to try toggling the ‘Do not allow search engines to show this author’s archives in search results’?setting to On, saving the profile, then unchecking, and saving it again.

Can you please try the aforementioned suggestions and let us know whether this resolves your issue?

Hi,

thank you for your reply. I’ve toggled every option multiple times, but it doesn’t help at all. I now have made a post (which is not visible) with all the authors as author of the post. That does the trick, but is of course not a real solution, but I want the pages to be indexed.

If you come up with another idea of wha could cause that, I’ll be. happy to know,

thank you,

Arjen

Hello @arjn

Please open https://www.theaterkrant.nl/author/anita/ in incognito/private mode, the noindex tag no longer appears. You may also consider clearing your browser cache.

Hi,

yes, that’s because of the solution I mentioned before: added all authors to a regular post instead of a custom post type,

kind regards,

Arjen

You should use this filter

/**
 * Add filter to index authors with no posts
 */
add_filter( 'wpseo_author_archive_post_types', function ( $posts ) {
	return array( 'post', 'custom_post_type_1', 'custom_post_type_3', 'custom_post_type_3' );
} );

Thanks for your solution, I use this code:

add_filter( 'wpseo_robots', 'yoast_seo_robots_index_author' );
function yoast_seo_robots_index_author( $robots ) {
  if ( is_author() ) {
    return 'index, follow';
  } else {
    return $robots;
  }
}

This works for me.

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by quolt.
• This reply was modified 2 years ago by quolt.

Thank you both! Works for me.