What this check inspects
Shipwork fetches the URL and the response headers, reads meta robots and the X-Robots-Tag header, checks the canonical to see whether it points at this URL or elsewhere, resolves robots.txt for the exact path and query, and checks whether the URL is listed in the sitemap. It returns a single indexable verdict and the reasons behind it.
What a failure means
A noindex in either the meta tag or the header is an error: the page is excluded from search. A robots.txt block for the path is an error: the page will not be crawled. A canonical pointing at a different URL is a warning: this URL will not be indexed on its own. A 4xx response is an error. Not being in the sitemap is only informational.
How to fix it
- Find which layer sets noindex. A staging header often survives launch at the CDN, long after the template was cleaned up.
- If a page is intentionally noindexed, make sure you did not also Disallow it. The crawler must be able to fetch it to see the noindex.
- Fix the canonical before blaming the index. A self-reference is what an indexable page wants.
- Add the URL to the sitemap once the other signals agree, so the crawler is told to look.
A typical failure, worked through
The setupA shop launches on a new domain and reuses the CDN configuration from staging, which still injects X-Robots-Tag: noindex on every response. Nothing in the theme mentions noindex.
What the check reportsThe check reports the header noindex as an error even though the meta robots tag is absent, and the verdict is not indexable. Viewing the page source does not show the problem, because the header is not in the HTML.
The pointnoindex can be set where you cannot see it in the page. Only a check that reads response headers catches the header form.