Meta Robots Checker — is a noindex hiding your page?
The `<meta name="robots">` tag can quietly remove a page from search with one word: `noindex`. This check reads your meta robots directives and flags anything that stops the page being indexed, followed or snippeted — noindex, nofollow, nosnippet, noarchive or a restrictive max-snippet. An accidental noindex is one of the most common reasons a perfectly good page never appears.
Updated June 2026 · Technical SEO & GEO · Part of Crawlability & Indexability
Check your page's meta robots tag
Paste a URL — GEObubbly reads the meta robots directives and flags any noindex or snippet limit that suppresses the page.
✓ Free check✓ 1 signal✓ No signup required
In short: The meta robots tag in the page head controls indexing and snippet behavior. The directive that matters most is noindex — if it is present, the page will be removed from search results.
What does the meta robots check look for?
It reads the <meta name="robots"> tag (and engine-specific variants like googlebot) and flags directives that limit indexing or display:
`noindex` — removes the page from search and AI results entirely (a fail).
`nofollow` — tells engines not to follow links from the page (a warning).
`nosnippet` / `max-snippet:0` — prevents a text snippet, which also limits AI quoting.
`noarchive` — blocks the cached copy.
No restrictive directives is a pass; a noindex is a critical fail.
How is it evaluated, and how is it scored?
GEObubbly reads the rendered <head> for the meta robots tag and parses every directive it contains. It's a core check worth 3 points in Crawlability & Indexability. It pairs with the X-Robots-Tag header check, because the same noindex can be set in the HTTP header instead of the HTML — and that version is invisible in the page source.
Why the meta robots tag matters for SEO and GEO
A noindex is the single most direct way to remove a page from search, and it's frequently left on by accident — a CMS template default, a "discourage search engines" toggle, or markup copied from a staging build. Because the page otherwise looks and works perfectly, nobody notices until traffic quietly disappears. Snippet-limiting directives are subtler but matter for GEO: nosnippet and a low max-snippet restrict the text engines can show — and, by extension, the passages AI answer engines can quote from you. Keep meta robots open (index, follow) on pages you want seen, and only restrict deliberately. See the related Crawlability & Indexability guide for the full picture.
How this check scores
Pass:no restrictive directives.
Warning:snippet limits (nosnippet, low max-snippet) or nofollow only.
Fail:noindex present — excluded from search and AI surfaces.
FAQ
The <meta name="robots"> tag is an HTML directive in the page's <head> that tells search engines how to treat that specific page. Its values control indexing (index/noindex), link following (follow/nofollow) and how the page can be displayed (nosnippet, noarchive, max-snippet). Unlike robots.txt, which controls crawling, the meta robots tag controls what an engine does after it has read the page — most importantly, whether it's allowed to index it at all.