Check 13 of 23 · Can AI read the page?

Your homepage is allowed in search

One hidden setting called noindex tells Google to leave your page out of search. AI answers are built on that same index. This is the one setting that can undo everything else.

  • Who fixes itYou can do this
  • TimeAbout 5 minutes
  • Worth2 of 100 points
  • How sure we areProven

What this is

Your page can carry a hidden instruction called noindex. It says to search engines: “do not put this page in your index.” The index is the big list of pages Google knows about. If your homepage is not in it, it cannot come up in search.

The instruction can live in two places: a small tag in the page’s code, or a header your server sends with the page. Either one counts.

Why it matters to you

This check is only 2 points, and that number is misleading. AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the Google index. A noindex keeps your homepage out of that index. When that happens, nothing else on this list can help. It is a small setting with an outsized effect.

Almost every site passes. A fail is usually a leftover from when the site was being built.

What we look for

We read the robots meta tag, the googlebot meta tag, and the X-Robots-Tag response header on your homepage.

  • Pass: none of them says noindex. Full points.
  • Warn: none says noindex, but one says noai or noimageai. You get 1 of 2 points. Some engines treat that as a request not to use your content in AI answers.
  • Fail: any of the three says noindex. Zero points, and the result names which one.

Whether you can fix this yourself

Yes. On WordPress and most platforms this is a checkbox. On a custom site it is one line in a template or one line in the host settings, and a web person will find it fast.

How to fix it

Find the noindex and remove it. Where it usually hides:

WordPress

Settings, then Reading. Untick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and save. If that was already off, open the homepage in the editor and check the Yoast SEO or Rank Math panel for a per-page “Allow search engines to show this page” setting.

Squarespace or Wix

Both have a per-page setting to hide a page from search engines. Search your platform’s help for “hide page from search” and make sure it is off for the homepage.

Shopify

Shopify does not noindex your homepage by default. If it is happening, a theme edit or an app added it. Search the theme’s theme.liquid for “noindex”.

Your own site or a developer

Look for a robots meta tag in your layout and an X-Robots-Tag in your host or server config. Replace it with:

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />

Or remove the tag entirely, which means the same thing.

How to check it worked

Right-click your homepage, choose “View page source”, and search for “noindex”. You should find nothing. Then run the free check again. The header version does not show in the source, so the check is the reliable way to confirm that one.

Do not worry about

Your robots.txt file. It cannot cause this warning and it will never show you a noindex. They are different tools. A robots.txt block keeps crawlers from reading a page. A noindex lets them read it and asks them not to list it.