How to Prevent or Enable Indexing

Site indexing allows a website to be visible in search engine results. A site can also be de-indexed (removed from search results) with or without the site owner's knowledge.

Block a Page from Indexing

1

To block a page from being indexed, you simply need to add a metatag to the header of the page with the noindex directive, like so:

<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”>

2

This directive can also be added to an HTTP header:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
(…)
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
(&hellip;)<br>

Enable a Webpage to be Indexed

1

Fixing a page that is blocked from indexing can be as simple as removing the noindex directive from the page's metatag or HTTP header (referrenced above) .

2

You may also need to edit the website's sitemap.

Note: A noindex directive will not be effective if the page is blocked by a robots.txt file. If it's included in a robots.txt, then the crawler will not see the noindex directive and that the page can appear in search results by way of a link.

The webpage can still be de-indexed by Google or other search engines if the page is found to have low quality content.