What does the indexability verdict check?
It answers one question with a single verdict: is this page eligible to be indexed and shown? Rather than testing one signal at a time, it rolls up five independent indexing signals, because each can block a page on its own:
- HTTP status — the page must return a genuine
200 OK, not a 4xx, 5xx or a soft-404. - robots.txt — no
Disallowrule may block the URL or its critical resources. - Meta robots tag — no
noindexin the page's<meta name="robots">. - X-Robots-Tag header — no
noindexin the HTTP response header (invisible in the page source). - Canonical tag — the canonical must point to this page or the correct primary version, not a blocked or redirecting URL.
If all five are clear, the page is indexable. If any one blocks indexing, the verdict fails.
How is it evaluated, and how is it scored?
GEObubbly fetches the page and its robots.txt, reads the response headers and the rendered <head>, follows the canonical, and combines the five signals into one verdict. It's a core, automatically-run check carrying a weight of 5 points — the highest in the Crawlability & Indexability category — because nothing else you do matters if the page can't be indexed in the first place.
Why indexability matters for SEO and GEO
Indexability is upstream of everything. A page that can't be indexed scores zero where it counts: it won't rank in search, and it won't be available for AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to read and cite. The most common cause is an accidental noindex — left over from a staging environment, applied by a CMS setting, or hidden in an X-Robots-Tag header nobody checks. Because the failure is silent, it can suppress a page for months before anyone notices. Getting the indexability verdict to pass is the first, non-negotiable step toward both search rankings and AI citations — from there, the rest of the Crawlability & Indexability checks and the heavier GEO / LLM Readiness signals build on a page that can actually be seen.