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Indexability Analysis

Our checker evaluates your website's indexability to ensure search engines can properly discover and include your content in their search results.

  • Indexing status: We verify whether your pages are set to be indexed by search engines or if they're intentionally or accidentally blocked.
  • Technical barriers: We check for HTTP status codes that might prevent indexing, like 404, 410, 500, or 503 errors.
  • Meta directives: We analyze robots meta tags to identify any "noindex" directives that block search engines.
  • Canonical implementation: We examine canonical tags to ensure they don't send conflicting signals about which page should be indexed.

Based on these findings, you can optimize your site's discoverability and ensure important pages are accessible to search engines while properly controlling access to pages that shouldn't be indexed.

Indexability Best Practices​

❌ Bad Practice​

<!-- Accidentally blocking important pages -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<!-- Critical content page that should be indexed -->

<!-- Conflicting indexing signals -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page" />
<!-- Canonical suggests indexing while robots meta blocks it -->

<!-- Error pages returning indexable status codes -->
<!-- 404 page returning 200 HTTP status, appearing indexable -->

<!-- Indexable staging or test environments -->
<!-- Production content duplicated on test.example.com without protection -->

<!-- Broken pages returning server errors -->
<!-- Page with 500 server errors appearing in search results -->

<!-- Thin content with no indexing controls -->
<!-- Pages with minimal useful content being indexed -->

<!-- Blocking robots.txt but missing noindex -->
<!-- Using robots.txt to block crawling but not indexing -->

✅ Good Practice​

<!-- Properly indexable important page -->
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
<!-- Or simply omit robots meta tag as index,follow is the default -->

<!-- Correctly blocking non-essential pages -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<!-- Allows link discovery but prevents indexing -->

<!-- Properly configured error pages -->
<!-- 404 page returns correct 404 status code -->

<!-- Appropriate canonical implementation -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/preferred-version" />
<!-- Points search engines to the version that should be indexed -->

<!-- HTTP header control for non-HTML resources -->
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
<!-- Used for PDFs, images, or other non-HTML resources -->

<!-- Staging environment protection -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
<!-- Combined with HTTP authentication for complete protection -->

<!-- Temporary removal during maintenance -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
<!-- Used during site updates before content is ready -->

<!-- Proper pagination indexing -->
<link rel="next" href="https://example.com/articles?page=2" />
<link rel="prev" href="https://example.com/articles" />
<!-- Helps search engines understand content relationships -->

Why Indexability Control Matters​

  • Search Visibility:
    Only indexed pages can appear in search results. Proper indexing control ensures your important content is discoverable.
  • Crawl Budget Optimization:
    Preventing indexing of low-value pages helps search engines focus on your important content.
  • Duplicate Content Management:
    Proper indexing controls help prevent similar or duplicate content from competing in search results.
  • Quality Control:
    Keeps temporary, incomplete, or error pages out of search results to maintain your site's reputation.
  • Privacy Protection:
    Ensures sensitive content or user-specific pages aren't publicly discoverable through search engines.

Effective indexability management is fundamental to SEO, ensuring search engines index what you want while respecting content you need to keep private or unpublished.