# Indexability

_Source: https://seomatrix.ai/tools/indexability/_

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## What it does

Indexability is whether search engines and AI crawlers are actually permitted to index a page and show it in results — governed by the meta-robots tag, the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, the canonical tag, and robots.txt rules. A page can sit in your sitemap, load fast, and pass every content audit yet carry a single noindex directive that keeps it out of Google — and out of any AI answer engine that grounds its answers on a search index. This checker fetches the page as Googlebot and as AI bots (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot) and reports every directive that would block or redirect indexing.

## What it checks

- **noindex in meta-robots** — A <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag in the HTML head removes the page from search indexes regardless of content quality, making it the most common silent killer of otherwise-healthy pages.
- **X-Robots-Tag header** — A noindex or none directive sent in the HTTP response header does the same job as the meta tag but is invisible in the page source, so it is easy to miss.
- **Canonical tag** — The rel=canonical link tells engines which URL is authoritative; one pointing at a different URL tells them to index that page instead of the one you are checking.
- **robots.txt access** — A Disallow rule stops a crawler from fetching the page at all, and a page that can't be fetched can't be read, indexed, or cited.
- **AI-bot access** — GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended each obey their own robots.txt rules, so a page open to Googlebot can still be closed to the crawlers that feed AI answers.
- **Googlebot fetchability** — The status code and directives returned specifically to Googlebot's user-agent, since servers sometimes serve bots differently than browsers.

## How to use it

1. Paste your page URL and run the check.
2. Review the flagged directives — any noindex, cross-domain canonical, or Disallow shown per crawler.
3. Fix the blocker at its source (remove the meta or header directive, correct the canonical, or edit robots.txt), then re-run to confirm the page is indexable.

## FAQ

### My page loads fine but isn't in Google — why?

A visually perfect page can still carry a noindex directive in its meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header, or be blocked by robots.txt; this check reports which one applies.

### What's the difference between robots.txt and noindex?

robots.txt controls whether a crawler may fetch a page, while noindex allows the fetch but tells engines not to index it. A page blocked in robots.txt can't even be told to noindex, so a stray Disallow can leave a URL indexed with no snippet.

### Do AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity follow the same rules?

They obey their own robots.txt user-agents (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended), so a page indexable by Google can still be invisible to AI answer engines — this tool checks each bot separately.

### Can a canonical tag stop my page from being indexed?

Not directly, but a canonical pointing to a different URL tells engines to index that other URL instead, so a wrong canonical can effectively deindex the page you wanted ranked.