Fix library · SEO
Your site may be telling Google to ignore it
If your website has vanished from search results, or never appeared in the first place, this is the thing to rule out before anything else. A noindex tag is one line of code asking search engines to leave a page out of their results. It is switched on by default in more website builders than most owners expect, and it overrides everything else you do for SEO.
Your homepage is hidden from search
What SEOPert detected
Your homepage carries a noindex instruction, which asks search engines to leave it out of their results entirely.
What this means
Your homepage tells search engines not to list it. Until this is removed, Google can drop your site from results entirely.
How to fix it
- Find where the noindex setting comes from: an SEO plugin or page setting, a “hide from search engines” option, or a developer-added tag.
- Turn it off for the homepage and any page that should appear in Google.
- Re-run your SEOPert audit to confirm, then ask Google to re-crawl in Search Console (URL Inspection → Request indexing).
On WordPress
- Go to Settings → Reading and untick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Save.
- If you use Yoast or Rank Math, open the homepage in the editor and check its SEO “Advanced” settings allow search engines to show the page.
- Clear any caching plugin, re-run your SEOPert audit, then request indexing in Google Search Console.
On Shopify
- In Shopify admin go to Online Store → Preferences and check that password protection is off (a password-protected store is hidden from search).
- If a theme or app adds noindex, ask your theme developer to remove it.
- Re-run your SEOPert audit to confirm.
On Wix
- In the Wix editor open Pages, open your homepage’s settings, and go to SEO basics.
- Turn on “Let search engines index this page”. Publish.
- Re-run your SEOPert audit to confirm.
If you are handing this to a developer
Remove noindex from <meta name="robots"> and from any X-Robots-Tag response header on indexable pages.
Check it worked. View the homepage source (Ctrl+U) and search for “noindex”: it should not appear. Then use URL Inspection in Google Search Console: it should say indexing is allowed.
Some of your pages are hidden from search
What SEOPert detected
One or more linked pages carry a noindex instruction, so they will not appear in search results.
What this means
Some linked pages tell search engines not to list them. That is right for thank-you or login pages, but wrong for services, products or articles you want found.
How to fix it
- Open the list of affected pages below and decide, page by page, whether each one should appear in Google.
- For pages that should: turn off the “hide from search engines” / noindex setting for that page.
- Leave noindex on pages that genuinely should stay out of search (thank-you pages, account pages).
On WordPress
- Edit each affected page. In the Yoast or Rank Math panel, under Advanced, set it to allow search engines.
- Update the page and clear any cache.
On Wix
- For each page: Pages → page settings → SEO basics → turn on “Let search engines index this page”.
If you are handing this to a developer
Remove noindex from meta robots / X-Robots-Tag on the listed URLs that should be indexed.
Check it worked. View each page’s source and search for “noindex”, or check it in Google Search Console’s URL Inspection.
Related
Check your own site
See which of these apply to you.
The free audit checks up to 10 pages and tells you exactly what it found, in the same plain language as these guides. No account, no card.