In this article, we will take a look at the Google Search Console error with URL submitted marked with “noindex”. What does it mean and how is Noindex checked and how to fix it?
Error indicates that this page is not indexed. In other words, Google tried to index your page, but it couldn’t. How does that happen? On the other hand, “Submitted URL” indicates that you submitted the page for indexing. This means that the “URL” is included in the sitemap. On the other hand, there is something on the page that tells Googlebot not to index the page. The noindex can be a meta tag in the page source code or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. As a result, the page will not appear in search results, so you must check Noindex.
At first, open the page source of the URL categorized by this error and check Noindex. Then check if the header includes the bots “noindex” meta tag, as shown in the image below.
Once you have confirmed that the page includes an anti-index meta tag, you need to determine whether the page has been correctly or incorrectly tagged with the noindex meta tag. Based on that, you can follow the following steps.
If your page’s URL is set to noindex correctly, but you’re still seeing this error, it’s possible that Google hasn’t crawled your page since the changes were made.
So you should check if Google is able to access your website map. Head over to your website’s map and check if it can be accessed. You can also make use of this tool to check if your sitemap can be accessed or if there is an error. If your sitemap returns a 404 error, you can refer to our tutorial to fix that.
If for any other reason your sitemap is inaccessible, you should be able to discover it now, so you can sort it accordingly.
It is also possible that your sitemap is cached, and this may affect any recent changes that do not appear in the sitemap. You can refer to our dedicated knowledge base tutorial for excluding a sitemap from caching.
Once the problem with the sitemap is fixed, remove the sitemap from Google Search Console and submit it again.
If your page is set with noindex incorrectly, you must change your Rank Math settings to add the index bots meta tag.
Start by opening the post / page / taxonomy term in the WordPress editor. In the case of the Gutenberg editor, click the Rank Math SEO icon in the top-right corner of the page to open the Rank Math Metabox.
For the Classic Editor and Ranking Terms, scroll down to the bottom of the page to find Rank Math Metabox.
If the Rank Math Metabox is not available to you, make sure you have enabled Add SEO controls from Rank Math > Titles & Meta Settings > Posts (or other related sections).
In the Rank Math Metabox that appears on the screen, choose the Advanced tab. If the Advanced tab is not available to you, make sure you have switched to Advanced Mode in Rank Math. If the Robots Meta is set without an index, simply select the index checkbox, as shown below, and refresh the page.
While the previous step allows you to modify the noindex meta tag for specific posts, you still have to confirm that the Noindex is checked and that noindex is set as the default in the Heading and Meta settings. So go to WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Titles & Meta. Then check each tab and make sure the settings are as per your preference. If the posts and ratings that are set as “noindex” are according to your preference, you can ignore them. Or, if you consider that these pages add more value to your visitors and need to be indexed, you can index these pages by selecting a robots meta tag “index” as shown below.
Once you make the changes, don’t forget to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page so the changes are reflected.
However, these changes will only be reflected in your future posts and not the current ones. So, if you have existing posts set using noindex incorrectly, you can change them to indexing using Metabox as discussed in the previous step or use bulk actions to make changes to a number of posts at once.
If you have a number of posts on your website that are mistakenly set to noindex, you can take advantage of our bulk actions feature to set them for indexing. Here you can find out how Noindex is checked.
Once you make the changes, you can check your page source code to see if the noindex meta tag has been removed.
Finally, make sure your sitemap is up to date. Then, you can head over to Google Search Console and choose the Check for Repair option to let the search engine know what error is being resolved. Then, you can wait for Google to crawl your website and remove the error notification from the search console.
This is all about Noindex Check If you still have any questions about this error and how to solve it, you are always welcome my friend, to contact our dedicated support team at Nofal SEO, we are available 24/7, to assist you.
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