• BBgmoro

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Get found
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
          Moz API

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'

        Technical SEO
        4
        6
        2059
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • d.bird
          d.bird Subscriber last edited by

          A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results.

          Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/

          Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page.

          I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed.

          Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Paul-IW
            Paul-IW @effectdigital last edited by

            @effectdigital and @jasongmcmahon did you ever get to the bottom of this and if so what caused it and what was the long term fix, as GSC and Google seem to behaving in a peculiar way?

            We had a similar issue with this page: https://www.simplyadverse.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgage, but after several cache clears and re-indexing/fix requests it indexed fine.

            We now have a page on another similar site that is stubbornly refusing to index. Its a new site and other than the a simple domain homepage, all pages when under development had "noindex " on them.

            Several pages on the site on launch behaved like this with GSC saying the page was marked as "noindex" but submitted in the sitemap, but when you check to see if indexing was possible GSC says its fine (we'd removed noindex and setup the sitemap) . All crawling tools say its fine, but this page wont index despite repeated attempts over a couple of weeks, all other pages are now fine, but this page won't index: https://simplysl.co.uk/buy-to-let/

            Other than they're all mortgage related sites/pages, I can't fathom why one page would be troublesome and all others index OK despite having the same setup and indexing process, any ideas?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • d.bird
              d.bird Subscriber @jasongmcmahon last edited by

              Thanks, I'll take a look

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • d.bird
                d.bird Subscriber @effectdigital last edited by

                Thanks for going into so much detail, much appreciated.

                We've asked Google to reindex it and 'validate the fix', even though we can't find anything to fix!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • jasongmcmahon
                  jasongmcmahon last edited by

                  Hi there, check that caching isn; the issues at server & CMS levels. Other than that reindex the page via GSC

                  d.bird 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • effectdigital
                    effectdigital last edited by

                    This is really weird. Really really weird!

                    As you say, your site's source code seems to confirm that it is set to index. If we look here, we can plainly see that the coding syntax for a no-index directive is "noindex" (all one word).

                    Let's look at your source code:

                    • https://d.pr/i/RAYzE4.png

                    Yep, everything seems fine there! But what if a script is modifying your source code and including the directive - and Google's picking up on that?

                    If we look at the modified source code which I rendered and saved to a file here:

                    • https://d.pr/f/1ZKNfF.php

                    ... we can see, there are no problems here either:

                    • https://d.pr/i/kcxO0z.png

                    Wow - that's really unhelpful! 😧

                    Let's see what happens if we specifically search Google's live index for the URL:

                    • https://d.pr/i/944xFl.png

                    Interestingly, when we search Google's index for this page, we get this page returned instead.

                    It makes sense that Google would return that URL if it couldn't return the main URL, as one is nested inside of the other. If everything was healthy, we'd see Google listing both URLs instead of just one of them. Even if you edit my index query to remove the trailing slash, you still only get the nested URL (not the one you want to be showing, which is at a slightly higher-up level)

                    Another thought I had was, hmm maybe this is a canonical tag gone rogue. That bore no fruit either, as this page (which you want to index, yet won't) canonicals to this page - and both of those URLs are exactly the same. As such, it's obvious that we can't blame the canonical tag either! I even viewed the modified source to see if it got altered, no dice (the canonical tag is just fine)

                    Maybe the XML file is telling Google not to index the URL?

                    • https://d.pr/i/dvbCfy.png

                    Nope - that's fine too! No problems there...

                    Could the robots.txt file be interfering?

                    • https://d.pr/i/DmAN1t.png

                    No! Darn it, that's not the problem

                    I know that a no-index or blocking directive can also be sent through the HTTP header (usually via X-robots). Let's check the response header of your URL out:

                    • https://d.pr/i/cy0MoW.png

                    Nothing there that really raises my eyebrow. This is enabled and set to block, but to be honest that shouldn't affect Google's crawling at all. Anyone correct me if I am wrong, but defending your site against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks doesn't impede crawling right?

                    Fudge it. Let's fling it through Google's Page-Speed Insights tool. Usually that will tell you if something is being blocked and why...

                    • https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk%2Fbad-credit-mortgages%2Fhow-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit%2F&tab=desktop

                    Nothing useful still!

                    Google's mobile friendly tool gives us some, semi-interesting information:

                    • https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly?view=fetch-info&id=g4uSC2GcoipwxKk-PtqN2Q

                    But it doesn't say the page can't be loaded. It only says some resources which the page pulls in can't be loaded! And guess what? They're all external things on other websites (other than a few theme related bits, but nothing IMO that should stop the whole page loading).

                    Let's try DeepCrawl's indexability checker (they make amazing software by the way... expensive though):

                    • https://d.pr/i/Iyrzq5.png

                    Sir... there is NO GOOD REASON why your URL shouldn't be indexed. I am 99.9% certain you have encountered a legit Google bug. Post about it here. Only Google can help you at this juncture

                    d.bird Paul-IW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Browse Questions

                    Explore more categories

                    • Moz Tools

                      Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                    • SEO Tactics

                      Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                    • Community

                      Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                    • Digital Marketing

                      Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                    • Research & Trends

                      Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                    • Support

                      Connect on product support and feature requests.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • vidi3423

                      Does Page speed matter for google ranking?

                      We are not sure that page does matter or not for google ranking as I am working for this keyword "flower delivery in Bangalore" from last few months and I saw some website's google first page who have low page speed but still ranking so I am really worried about my page that has also low page speed. will my Bangalore page rank on google the first page if the speed is low and kindly suggest me more tips for the ranking best factors which really works in 2020 and one more thing that domain authority really matters in this year? as I also saw some websites with low domain authority and ranking on google's first page. Home page: Flowerportal Bangalore page: https://flowerportal.in/flower-delivery/bangalore/ focus Keyword is: Flower delivery in Bangalore, send flowers to Bangalore

                      Technical SEO | | vidi3423
                      1
                    • SameerBhatia

                      Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages

                      Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
                      http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page  as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks

                      Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia
                      0
                    • Iamfaramon

                      How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?

                      I'm currently trying to find a way to stop googlebot from indexing specific areas of a page, long ago Yahoo search created this tag class=”robots-nocontent” and I'm trying to see if there is a similar manner for google or if they have adopted the same tag? Any help would be much appreciated.

                      Technical SEO | | Iamfaramon
                      0
                    • aronwp

                      Should i index or noindex a contact page

                      Im wondering if i should noindex the contact page im doing SEO for a website just wondering if by noindexing the contact page would it help SEO or hurt SEO for that website

                      Technical SEO | | aronwp
                      0
                    • TalkInThePark

                      De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?

                      Hi all, We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products. Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers. Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this: 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL. If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL. When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool This would be an example of an old URL:
                      www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 This would be an example of a new URL:
                      www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue I have to specific questions: Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above? What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site". And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
                      And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business. Best regards,
                      TalkInThePark

                      Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
                      0
                    • Crumpled_Dog

                      Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?

                      I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
                      Scott

                      Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
                      0
                    • wparlaman

                      What's the difference between a category page and a content page

                      Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? (  I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill

                      Technical SEO | | wparlaman
                      0
                    • DarwinChinaSEO

                      Why google index my IP URL

                      hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson

                      Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.