Everything that decides indexability
Several independent signals can stop a page from being indexed, and they are spread across the HTML, the HTTP headers, robots.txt and the server configuration. A website relaunch, a staging setting carried over to production or an SEO plugin switch is enough to flip one of them. The checker collects them for the URL you enter.
- HTTP status: only 200 pages are indexed; redirects, 404 and 5xx responses are not.
- Meta robots and X-Robots-Tag noindex or none directives, including nosnippet settings.
- robots.txt rules that block crawling of the page.
- Canonical tag pointing to a different URL, or to an address that redirects or fails.
- HTTPS redirect and www consistency, so only one version of the page is presented.
- Language attribute, hreflang annotations, title, headings and word count, which affect how the page is understood.
Typical causes we see
The classic case is a WordPress site where the setting that discourages search engines was ticked during development and never unticked. Another is a canonical tag that points every page to the homepage, effectively asking Google to ignore all other pages. Multilingual sites sometimes canonicalise each language version to the English one, which removes the translations from results.
Thin pages are a softer problem. A practice-area page with two sentences can be indexed but may not be considered helpful enough to rank. The checker reports the word count so you can spot pages that need more substance.
After fixing
Once the blocking signal is gone, request indexing of the URL in Google Search Console with the URL Inspection tool, which also shows how Google last saw the page. Indexing then usually follows within days, though Google does not guarantee to index every page.
Prevent a repeat by adding the indexing check to your launch checklist: after every redesign, plugin change or migration, test a handful of key pages here before announcing the new site.
Pages you should keep out of search
Not every page belongs in search results. Thank-you pages, internal search results, login screens, test pages and thin tag archives are better marked noindex. The checker helps here too: run it on those pages and confirm the noindex is present, while your service, team and contact pages stay indexable.