Remove blocking meta robots directives
Your page carries a blocking directive - noindex, none, or noai - in a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag header. Unlike robots.txt, which controls fetching, these rules control use: they tell crawlers that even fetched content must be excluded. For AI visibility they’re a kill switch.
Where do these directives hide?
Three places to check:
- The HTML head:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">- often left over from a staging site or toggled by an SEO plugin’s “discourage indexing” setting. - HTTP headers:
X-Robots-Tag: noindexsent by the server - check with your browser’s network tab orcurl -I. - CMS settings: WordPress’s “Search engine visibility” checkbox, or per-page visibility toggles in your SEO plugin, generate these tags for you.
What should the tag say instead?
Usually nothing - a page with no robots meta tag is fully indexable by default. Delete the tag rather than replacing it. If you need granular control, <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"> is explicit and harmless.
What about noai specifically?
noai and noimageai are newer directives aimed at AI systems. Support varies by crawler, but declaring them signals exclusion to any system that honors them - the opposite of what you want if you’re optimizing for AI visibility. Remove them unless exclusion is a deliberate policy.
After removing the directive, redeploy and rescan to confirm the check passes. Meta directives are one of three exclusion layers, so check your robots.txt and confirm the page still serves over HTTPS while you’re auditing access.
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