“noindex” in the robots tag that blocks indexing by search engines

Hello @sibi84,

Thank you for reaching out,

To solve this issue, you need to check and correct the settings on your WordPress site. There is no issue with the code, but it could be an issue with how the site is built/adjusted. In this case, you can contact an SEO expert. However, if you want to diagnose and fix the issue yourself, here are some steps you can follow:

1. Uncheck the “Search engine visibility” option in the WordPress reading settings: https://www.ads-software.com/documentation/article/settings-reading-screen/#:~:text=Search%20Engine%20Visibility%20(New%20as%20of%20Version%203.5.0).

2. Check their settings if you’re using an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math. So, go to the plugin’s settings page and ensure that the default settings for pages and posts are set to index. Also, review the settings for each content type (posts, pages, custom post types).

3. Inspect your pages and check if specific pages are set to noindex. Then you can edit a page that is not being indexed. Scroll down to the SEO section (typically managed by plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math). Ensure that the Meta Robots Index is set to index.

4. If you have customized your code or are using a child theme, go through all your customizations to ensure that none of the template files contain the noindex meta tag. For instance, if you have a child theme with a custom header, examine the header.php file in the child theme.

5. Test with Google Search Console, so after making the necessary changes, request Google to re-crawl your site, go to Google Search Console, and use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing for the corrected pages. Validate the fix once again.

These steps will help you recognize and delete the noindex meta tags that are stopping your pages from getting indexed.

I hope it helps.
Best Regards

Hello Shahin, Thank you very much for the clarification.
I looked in the various settings of the site but as I suspected I already had the correct settings, I also looked in the theme settings, and finally I looked for the advanced settings of yoast seo, and there I checked all the recommended or recommended things, and indeed there were things I had not checked.
I tried again from Google search console to request the indexing of the unindexed pages and now unlike before it tells me that the request has been sent, so I’m hoping that I’ll get confirmation that the problem has been resolved shortly.
I thank you so much for your help, the topic is very broad and for a non-IT like me I really didn’t know where to “hit my head”

Thanks so much
Sibi

Hello @sibi84,

You’re welcome,
I’m glad to hear that you managed to find and adjust the necessary settings.
You will hopefully soon get confirmation that the issue has been fixed.

Best Regards

Good morning
Unfortunately, the problem is not solved. I tried to redo the indexing request but it tells me that the problem could not be solved. if I go to the list of non-indexed pages and open one at random I get this:

Page indexing Page is not indexed: Excluded based on “noindex” tag
Detection
Sitemap No referral sitemap detected
Referral page. https://val-tec.it/filtri-di-processo-filtration-group/
Scan. Last scan. 7 May 2024, 07:07:56
Scan performed by Googlebot for smartphone
Scan allowed? Yes
Page retrieval Successful
Indexing allowed? No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag
Indexing User-reported canonical content None
Canonical content selected by Google: URL checked

I don’t know what to do anymore

Sibi

Hello @sibi84,

Thank you for reaching out,

Although I can’t see any noindex on your page, we have not received any similar reports so far, and we cannot reproduce it on our end.
https://postimg.cc/r0TgLq96

Regarding the issue you’ve encountered, it is better to talk to an SEO expert about this.

Note 1: if you using a custom code or custom header, you might check the codes in your customizations and remove that meta manually.

Note 2: Recheck the site and if the noindex only happens on this page, then re-create that post.

In the following, I have included some helpful resources:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/block-indexing
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en

Once you’ve removed the noindex tag or recreated that post, you can use Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to resubmit the URL for indexing. This will tell Google to recrawl the page and potentially index it if there are no other issues.

I hope it helps.
Best Regards

Thank you very much for your support, I tried asking in the yoast seo plugin forum, let’s see what they say.

Thanks again