robots noindex on archive pages

If you’ve already confirmed that the setting for SEO>Search Appearance>Taxonomies>Product Categories is set to ‘Show Product categories in search results?’ as ‘Yes’, this value can also be set on a per product category page by going to Products>Categories, and on the edit screen for the category clicking on the Advanced tag of the Yoast metabox and setting ‘Allow search engines to show this Category in search results?’. Can you please check that setting and confirm it is also set to ‘Yes’?

I go into Products>Categories, edit a catogory, Yoast SEO> Settings > Allow search engines to show this Category in search results?
The dropdown value is set to:
Yes (current default for Product categories)
Other options are: Yes, No.

The same applies to Portfolio>Categories, i.e. set to Yes.

Please advise.

That is indeed strange. Sometimes strange behavior may be caused by a plugin or theme conflict.

Please provide the answers to the following:

1. Make sure the issue doesn’t persist when Yoast SEO is disabled.
2. Have you performed a conflict check? If not, please do so. Did you discover a conflict?
3. Does the issue occur when using a default theme with only Yoast SEO and WooCommerce (no add-ons) active?
4. Does the issue occur with the current 5.1 version of WordPress?
5. Does the issue occur with the current 3.5.5 version of WooCommerce?

Closed due to inactivity.

So I identified the plugin (Search & Filter) causing the following line, after following the conflict check:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”/> (*)

I contacted the S&F plugin author. He said after more testing, (*) comes out when Yoast and his plugin are BOTH activated.
So if one of two plugins is activated, there is no (*) line.

Could that mean Yoast may be part of the issue?

There are a number of plugin results with the keywords Search & Filter so I think this is the plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search-filter/

If this isn’t the plugin you use, please provide a link to the one you use.

If this is the plugin you’re using, I was unable to get a noindex to display on a product category using a few different shortcodes to display the Search & Filter box.

If you remove the [searchandfilter {ARGUMENTS}] shortcode from a single category, does the noindex go away on that category? If removing the shortcode removes the noindex, add the shortcode back with one argument and option at a time to narrow down which one causes the noindex to be displayed.

Also, please note bumping is not allowed per the forum guidelines.

Yes this is the correct plugin. Actually I bought the Pro version.

In the archive php file(s), I have this line to output the filter dropdowns:
echo do_shortcode (‘[searchandfilter id=”xxxx”]’);
(id is the only argument, the filter is set up from the backend and assigned an id.)

If I comment out the above line, logically there is no filter function on the archive page(s), but the noindex line remains visible.

OTOH, if I deactivate Yoast but keep S&F activated, the following do not show up in source:
<meta name=”description” … />
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”/>
<meta property=”og:___” … />
<meta name=”twitter:___” … />

Also I want to add that if I switch to another SEO plugin such as All in One SEO Pack, the “noindex” line does NOT show up.

We want to keep Yoast as the SEO solution as we spent too many hours on SEO.

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by duckian.

Very odd. It’s acting like a search or 404 page (we auto-noindex those page types) even though it’s an archive page. Let’s see if that’s the case by adding the snippet below to your theme’s functions.php file.

add_filter( 'wpseo_robots', 'yoast_seo_robots_remove_search' );
function yoast_seo_robots_remove_search( $robots ) {
  if ( is_search() || is_404() ) {
    return false;
  } else {
    return $robots;
  }
}

I added your snippet to functions.php, but no luck ??

BUT… if I modify it to:
if ( is_search() || is_404() || is_archive() ) {
…

Then the robots noindex line does not show up.
(Check source code)

Would you like to comment on that?
I know it’s a hack, but would like to see a proper implementation.

That confirms that the page is returning as an archive. Which makes no sense as to why the noindex would show up when everything is set to index. I think the issue is specific to your site and/or setup of the plugins.

So let’s go back to the basic checks. Go to Admin > SEO > Tools > Export Settings

Click the ‘Export your Yoast SEO settings’ button to generate a text field with your settings. If it’s hard to read, copy and paste into your favorite text editor. Review the settings and look for any lines that start with noindex and end with =1. The =1 is what tells Yoast to output the noindex robots meta tag.

For example:
noindex-tax-product_cat = 1 would noindex all product categories

Are there any lines that start with noindex and end with =1? If so, which ones? You can copy/paste the relevant lines in your reply.

With your (modified) snippet in functions.php…

There is one such noindex line in the export:
noindex-author-noposts-wpseo = 1

(and just for the sake of it, without the snippet: same single result)

(from OP)
This is an archive page
https://thamesvalleybrick.com/product-category/face-brick/

and so are these pages:
/product-category/abc
/product-colour/xyz
/gallery-category/pqr

Search & Filter uses the same archive page (php) to output the (filtered) results.

Is Yoast thinking these pages are search result pages?

Thanks.

@duckian The noindex-author-noposts-wpseo = 1 is referring the author archives that has no posts in them and isn’t related to product taxonomies.

The page you have shared with us https://thamesvalleybrick.com/product-category/face-brick/ isn’t generating any noindex robots meta. Can you please confirm that whether you’re still seeing the noindex robots meta on the relevant page?