Free Noindex Checker
One fetch, both places a noindex can hide: the meta robots and googlebot tags in the HTML, and the X-Robots-Tag header that view-source never shows.
This is one fetch of one page.
ShipDR runs the same verified check on every directory listing you track, on a schedule: live, dofollow, indexable, still there tomorrow. $10 once, per website.
Why this is the check that matters
A noindex page leaves Google’s index and, over time, stops being crawled at all, so every backlink on it passes nothing.
For directory submissions this is the silent failure: the listing is live, the anchor is a clean dofollow, and the page it sits on is invisible to search engines.
Checking rel without checking indexability tells you half the story.
This tool reads the meta robots and googlebot tags plus the X-Robots-Tag response header in a single fetch, the same read ShipDR performs on every listing it verifies.
It is also the check people skip, because nothing about a noindex page looks wrong.
The listing loads, your name is on it, the link works when clicked. Nothing in the visible page says the one thing that decides whether the backlink counts.
The two places a noindex hides
In the HTML
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">, or the same thing with name="googlebot" to aim it at Google alone. This one you can see: open view-source and search for robots.
In the HTTP response
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, sent alongside the page rather than inside it. View-source shows nothing at all.
You need the Network tab in devtools, or curl -I, or a checker that reads response headers.
The header is the one that catches people out, and it is the reason a page can pass every eyeball test and still be excluded.
It is often set at the platform level, by a host, a CDN rule or a framework default, so the person who built the page never wrote it and would not find it by reading their own markup.
Both carry exactly the same weight with Google, so a checker that reads only the markup answers half the question.
What actually counts as a noindex
Most of the disagreement between checkers comes from these six rules. This is how the parser behind this tool reads a page, matched to what Google documents:
Directives are a list
content="index, max-snippet:-1" is a comma separated list, so the value is never compared whole. The word has to appear as its own directive, which is why a page mentioning noindex in its body text is not a noindex page.
none means noindex
content="none" is shorthand for noindex, nofollow. It blocks just as hard as the spelled-out version, and it is the form most often missed by a quick search for the word noindex.
Case does not matter
Directives and bot names are case insensitive, so NOINDEX and NoIndex both count.
A header may name a bot first
X-Robots-Tag: googlebot: noindex applies to Google. One naming a different crawler is not your concern and is not read as a noindex here, which keeps a directive aimed at some unrelated bot from being reported as a Google-facing block.
The most restrictive tag wins
A page can carry several robots tags. Any single noindex among them is decisive, so there is no averaging and no last-one-wins.
Placement is not enforced, comments are
Google honours a robots tag wherever it sits, so a tag left in the body counts as much as one in the head. A commented-out tag does not count, because Google never parses it, which is why this checker strips comments before reading.
How pages end up noindex by accident
Very few noindex tags are decisions somebody remembers making. The common ones:
- The WordPress launch switch. Settings, Reading, “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” puts a noindex on every page. It is meant for pre-launch and it is routinely still on afterwards.
- A staging site that grew up. Staging environments are built noindex on purpose. Clone or promote one to production and the directive comes along, invisibly, because nobody thinks to look for it in a site that has been working for months.
- The platform adding a header. Some hosts and CDNs attach
X-Robots-Tag: noindexto preview and deployment domains by default. Reasonable behaviour, until a custom domain or a proxy rule ends up covered by the same policy. - SEO plugin defaults. Archive, tag, author and paginated pages are often noindex out of the box. Fine as a rule, awkward when the page you care about is served by one of those templates.
- An inherited template. Thank-you pages, gated content and internal tools are built noindex, and the layout gets reused later for something meant to be public.
On a directory listing you have no way to fix any of these, which is the point of checking.
If a directory serves its listings noindex, submitting to it buys a page nobody searching will find and a backlink that passes nothing. That is worth knowing before you spend the time, not after.
noindex, nofollow and robots.txt are three different things
They get used interchangeably and they do not overlap. Getting them straight saves a lot of wasted debugging:
noindex
A page-level directive. The page may still be crawled and its links may still be followed, but it must not appear in search results. This is the one that voids the backlinks on the page, because a page out of the index eventually stops being visited.
nofollow
Two different things share the name. As a rel attribute on a single link it means that one link passes no ranking credit. As a robots directive on a page it means do not follow the links out of this page. Neither one keeps the page itself out of the index, and neither one makes a link worthless to a reader: a nofollow backlink still sends real traffic.
robots.txt disallow
A crawl instruction, not an index instruction. It asks crawlers not to fetch the URL, which is not the same as asking them to forget it: a disallowed URL can still be indexed on the strength of links pointing at it. It also blocks the fix, since a page Google may not fetch is a page whose noindex Google can never see.
This checker reads the page’s own directives, in the markup and in the response headers. It does not fetch the domain’s robots.txt, so treat an indexable verdict as “nothing on this page blocks indexing”, not as proof that Google is free to crawl it.
Checking one page, or watching all of them
A single check is a snapshot.
Indexability is not a property a page settles into: a directory can rebuild its templates, tighten its policy after a spam wave, or move to a host that sets headers differently, and every listing it carries changes overnight without anyone being told.
That is the case ShipDR exists for. It runs this same read on every listing you track, on a schedule, and tells you the day the answer changes.
Checking a page that links to you? The dofollow link checker reads the anchor rel and the noindex signals together.
To see where a domain stands before you spend time on it, the domain rating checker looks up its Ahrefs DR.
One page today. Every listing, every day.
Indexability is not a setting that stays put: a directory can rebuild its templates or tighten policy after a spam wave, and every listing it carries changes overnight without anyone being told. ShipDR reads this same signal on every listing you track and reports the day it flips.
- Every listing rechecked on a schedule, not once
- Live, dofollow and indexable, read from the page itself
- Told the day a backlink drops or flips
Adding a website and charting its Domain Rating is free, no card. The backlink engine is $10 once, per website, with no subscription.
Fair questions
What is a noindex tag?
A noindex directive, written either as one word or as no index, tells search engines to drop the page from their index. It can sit in the HTML as a meta robots or meta googlebot tag, or ride the HTTP response as an X-Robots-Tag header. Once honored, the page stops appearing in search at all.
Why does noindex matter for backlinks?
A backlink only passes value if the page carrying it is in the index. A dofollow link on a noindex page looks perfect in the HTML and passes nothing: Google drops the page, then eventually stops crawling it. It is the silent failure of directory submissions, a listing that looks live and counts for nothing.
How do I check a page for noindex?
You need both places: the meta robots and googlebot tags in the HTML, and the X-Robots-Tag response header, which never shows up in view-source. This tool fetches the page once and reads both, the same way ShipDR reads every listing it verifies.
Does noindex remove a page from Google straight away?
No. Google has to crawl the page again to see the directive, so removal takes anywhere from days to weeks depending on how often that URL is crawled. The reverse is slower still: removing a noindex does not restore the page on the spot, because a page Google stopped indexing is also a page it stopped visiting often. For a backlink this is the part that stings, since value stops flowing well before the listing looks any different.
Is noindex the same as a robots.txt disallow?
No, and combining them backfires. A disallow asks crawlers not to fetch the URL at all; it does not remove anything from the index, and a disallowed URL can still be indexed on the strength of links pointing at it, usually shown as a bare URL with no description. Worse, a page Google is forbidden to fetch is a page whose noindex Google can never read, so a disallow can keep an unwanted page in the index indefinitely. To remove a page, let it be crawled and serve noindex.
Can a page be dofollow and noindex at the same time?
Yes, and that pairing is worth knowing about. The anchor carries no nofollow, so the link reads as a perfect dofollow backlink to the eye and to any tool that only checks rel, while the page it sits on is telling Google to stay away. Whether that is deliberate or just neglect, the effect on you is identical: the link is decoration. It is why ShipDR reads indexability on every check instead of stopping at rel.
The checker says indexable, so why is my page not in Google?
Indexability is necessary, not sufficient. This tool answers one narrow question honestly: is anything on this page telling Google to stay out. It cannot tell you whether Google has crawled the page yet, whether it judged the content thin or duplicate, or whether a robots.txt rule blocks the fetch, which is a separate file this tool does not read. No indexability checker can promise a page will rank; it can only rule out the one failure that silently voids every backlink on the page.