How to Fix Pages Blocked From Google

What this means

A page can tell search engines not to list it. There are three ways to do that: a "noindex" tag in the page's code, a noindex instruction sent by your server (the X-Robots-Tag header), or a rule in your robots.txt file that stops search engines visiting the page at all.

Any one of them keeps the page out of Google's results, however good the page is.

Why it matters

Plenty of pages should be hidden. Your basket, checkout, account pages, thank-you pages and internal search results have no business in Google. Blocking those is correct, and you can leave them alone.

The problem is a page you want found that is blocked by mistake. It happens more than you'd think: a setting left on after a site was built, a plugin that hides a whole section, or a theme that adds the tag to new pages.

If your home page is blocked, it's urgent. Your whole site can drop out of Google.

How to fix it

Go through the list of blocked pages and sort them into two piles: pages that should be hidden, and pages you want people to find. Only the second pile needs work.

On WordPress

1. Go to Settings, then Reading, and make sure "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is NOT ticked. This one setting hides the entire site.
2. If you use Yoast SEO, open the page, find the Yoast box, open Advanced and set "Allow search engines to show this page in search results?" to Yes.
3. If you use Rank Math, open the page, go to Advanced in the Rank Math box and untick "No Index".

On Shopify, Wix and Squarespace

• Shopify: pages are indexed by default. A noindex usually comes from a theme edit or an app, so ask whoever changed the theme, or check the apps you installed recently.
• Wix: open the page's SEO settings and turn on "Let search engines index this page".
• Squarespace: open the page settings, go to the SEO tab and switch off "Hide page from search results".

If robots.txt is the cause

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser. A line like Disallow: /services/ blocks everything in that folder. Remove the line, or make it more specific, using your site builder's robots.txt setting or your SEO plugin.

One thing to know: robots.txt stops Google visiting a page, but it doesn't remove a page Google already knows about. To take a page out of Google, use noindex and let Google visit it.

Checking your fix

Search Console's URL Inspection tool shows whether Google is allowed to index a page. Once it says yes, ask Google to index it from the same screen.

If you use Duality, this check depends on how other parts of your site are set up, so the next monthly audit confirms it. You can also run a full audit from Site Audit if you'd rather not wait.