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No page you want indexed is blocked from being indexed
seo.gsc-blocked-from-indexing
Why this matters
A page can be kept out of Google deliberately — by a rule in robots.txt, or by a noindex instruction in the page or its headers. That is a legitimate thing to do for a checkout or a staging area, and a disaster when it happens to a page that is meant to earn traffic. It is one of the few site problems that is completely invisible from the front end: the page looks perfect to a visitor and does not exist to a search engine.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
half an hour
Care needed
Test before and after
How to fix it
Decide, page by page, whether it is meant to be in Google. For the ones that are: remove the matching Disallow line from robots.txt, or remove the noindex from the page's meta robots tag and from the X-Robots-Tag header — check both, because a header set by the server will override anything the page says. For the ones that are not meant to be indexed, take them out of the sitemap so the contradiction goes away and Google stops being asked to do something it is not allowed to do.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 24 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.