Remove the noindex header from the homepage on WordPress
Why it matters
An X-Robots-Tag header with noindex tells search engines to keep the homepage out of their results, even though the page itself looks fine. It is often a leftover from a staging server or a security rule.
Staged change. Do this in stages and check each one before the next, so a mistake does not break your site or your mail.
The fix
- Check that it is not deliberate. WordPress core does not send this header, so it comes from a plugin (SEO, security or maintenance), your host's staging or protection setting, or the server configuration.
- Deactivate plugins that touch headers one at a time and check with curl -sI, and look in the hosting panel for a staging or search engine visibility option.
Related
- Reported by the Indexability check
- Remove the noindex tag from the homepage
- Let search engines crawl the homepage
- Resolve the noindex that robots.txt hides
- Find out why Google cannot index the homepage
- Fix the error status on the homepage
- Remove the nofollow instruction from the homepage
- Add structured data to the homepage
- Fix the broken structured data on the homepage
Scan your domain to see whether this applies to you.