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Hi Rank Math Support,
I’ve been trying to get my site properly indexed in Google, but I’m running into an issue where many pages remain marked as noindex, despite my efforts to resolve it.
Initially, my sitemap contained three folders, but only one was being crawled—and even then, only 11 pages were indexed and 2 not indexed. After adjusting some settings in Rank Math, all three sitemap folders are now being crawled, which is progress. However, the number of indexed pages hasn’t changed—still only 11 indexed, and 2 explicitly marked as not indexed. Google Search Console shows that 66 pages have been discovered, so I began to wonder where the rest went.
To test, I inspected one of the pages manually and tried to request indexing. Strangely, I found the following tag in the source code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”follow, noindex”/>
This explains why indexing isn’t happening. I’ve tried everything I could think of to resolve it. I disabled my caching plugin (WP Fastest Cache), cleared the cache, and double-checked all Rank Math settings, but the noindex tag is still being output on the page.
It seems likely this is being caused by Rank Math, but I can’t figure out exactly where or why. Could you please help me identify the root of the issue and how to fix it?
Thanks in advance for your support!
Best regards,
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Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with your pages remaining marked as noindex despite your changes in Rank Math. Thank you for providing detailed information about your situation.
To address the noindex issue, please follow these steps:
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Check Rank Math’s Titles & Meta Settings:
- Navigate to WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta. Ensure that the settings for the specific posts or pages are set to index if you want them to be indexed. If they are set to noindex by default, you will need to change them to index.
- Here’s a visual reference for setting the index tags:
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Inspect Individual Posts/Pages:
- For the specific pages that are still showing the noindex tag, check their individual settings in the Rank Math meta box on the edit screen of each post/page. Make sure that the noindex option is not selected there.
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Global Settings Check:
- Ensure that the global settings at WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta → Posts/Pages/Products/CPTs do not have a noindex setting enabled.
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Clear Cache Again:
- Since you mentioned using WP Fastest Cache, ensure that you clear the cache again after making any changes in Rank Math settings. Sometimes, caching plugins can retain old settings.
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Check for Other Plugins:
- If you have other SEO or caching plugins installed, they might conflict with Rank Math. Temporarily disable them to see if that resolves the issue.
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Robots.txt File:
- Check your robots.txt file to ensure it does not contain any rules that might prevent indexing. You can edit this in Rank Math under WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → General Settings → Edit Robots.txt.
- Check your robots.txt file to ensure it does not contain any rules that might prevent indexing. You can edit this in Rank Math under WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → General Settings → Edit Robots.txt.
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Sitemap Accessibility:
- Ensure that your sitemap is accessible and correctly configured. You can check this using tools like httpstatus.io to confirm there are no errors.
If after following these steps the issue persists, please reply to this ticket with the URL of the affected pages so that a human agent from our support team can assist you further.
Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to helping you resolve this issue!
Sources:
How to Fix Submitted URL Marked ‘NoIndex’ Error » Rank Math
Fix Excluded by NoIndex Tag – Google Search Console Status » Rank Math
Why Google Hasn’t Indexed Your Post, Page, and/or Website? » Rank Math -
The ticket ‘Pages remain noindex despite changes in Rank Math’ is closed to new replies.