Find out why Google cannot index the homepage

Why it matters

Google's own test says the homepage is blocked from indexing, but the page sent to our scan shows no cause. The block may be set by a script, by a rule that only applies to Google's crawlers, or by a rule on the server.

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

1. Open the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console for the homepage and read what it says about indexing and crawling. It shows the version Googlebot received, which may differ from the one a browser sees.
2. Check the rendered page in your browser's DevTools (Elements panel) for a robots meta tag with noindex that a script adds, and check the response headers of the final address for X-Robots-Tag. Check redirects and a firewall or bot protection rule that treats Google's crawlers differently.
3. Remove the cause, but only after confirming it is not deliberate, then request indexing in Search Console.

curl -sI -A "Googlebot" https://example.com/ | grep -iE "^(HTTP|x-robots-tag|location)"

The examples use example.com. Replace it with your own domain.

Read the documentation ↗(opens in a new tab)

Related

• Reported by the Indexability check
• Remove the noindex tag from the homepage
• Remove the noindex header from the homepage
• Let search engines crawl the homepage
• Resolve the noindex that robots.txt hides
• 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