Search and sharing

Let search engines list your homepage

Why this matters

A noindex instruction asks search engines to leave a page out of their listings. This can be left over from a test site.

What to do

1. Confirm the homepage is meant to be public and appear in search. Keep private or unfinished pages out of search as intended.
2. In your website's search settings, turn off any setting that discourages search engines from listing the public homepage.
3. What to tell your web developer: Please remove noindex or none from the public homepage's robots meta tags and X-Robots-Tag response header. Meta tags are page settings; a response header is an instruction sent by the server. Check any search-engine-specific tags as well.

How to check the fix

Run the checker again and look for a pass for visibility to search engines. Removing noindex permits a listing but does not guarantee one or make it appear immediately.