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X-Robots-Tag Header Contains Noindex on Primary URL on WordPress

The primary URL returns an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header with a noindex directive. This tells search engines not to index the page, even if the HTML meta robots tag allows indexing.

Issue ID: CRAWL-XROBOTS-NOINDEX-001Severity: criticalEffort: S

Why this matters

The primary URL returns an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header with a noindex directive. This tells search engines not to index the page, even if the HTML meta robots tag allows indexing. This affects how clearly search engines understand the page and how persuasive it looks in search results.

WordPress fix path

How to fix this on WordPress

Check robots, sitemap, and noindex settings in your SEO stack.

  1. 1Inspect Yoast or Rank Math indexing settings.
  2. 2Confirm the page is indexable and the sitemap is enabled.
  3. 3Resubmit the sitemap in Search Console if needed.

After you fix it

  • ✓Use curl -I to inspect response headers and confirm X-Robots-Tag no longer contains noindex

Same fix, other platforms

Fix x-robots-tag header contains noindex on primary url on a different CMS

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