Technical fix guide
Hreflang Page Has Noindex
Page has hreflang annotations but also has a noindex directive. Search engines will not index the page, making the hreflang useless.
Issue ID: TECH-HREFLANG-NOINDEX-001
Severity: major
Impact: High
Effort: S
Use this article when
- You need deeper remediation guidance than the issue card can show.
- You want CMS-specific steps before handing the fix to a developer.
- You want a repeatable re-check path after shipping the change.
What this issue is
Page has hreflang annotations but also has a noindex directive. Search engines will not index the page, making the hreflang useless.
Why it matters
Page has hreflang annotations but also has a noindex directive. Search engines will not index the page, making the hreflang useless. This affects crawlability, rendering, and whether the site can be interpreted correctly by search engines.
How we detect it
- FreeSiteAudit flags this issue when the rule for TECH-HREFLANG-NOINDEX-001 fails and the page evidence points to Head metadata.
- You can usually confirm this by checking the page source or the relevant page settings inside your CMS.
Evidence examples
Check the affected page source, rendered output, or relevant CMS setting to confirm the missing or incorrect element.
How to fix it
- 1Remove the noindex directive from pages that are hreflang targets
- 2If the page should not be indexed, remove it from hreflang annotations on other pages
How to re-check it
- Confirm no noindex directive exists on pages with hreflang tags
Related tools
This issue is best verified with the full FreeSiteAudit crawl rather than a single-point mini tool.