Critical issue
Noindex regressions on important pages
Important pages can fall out of search when a deploy leaves a noindex directive on URLs that should be crawlable.
Why it matters
A noindex directive is an explicit instruction not to show a page in search results. When it lands on revenue, signup, or content pages by accident, rankings can disappear even though the page still loads for users.
Common signals
- A live page contains a noindex robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header.
- Search traffic drops after a release while the affected page still returns HTTP 200.
- Template-level robots settings differ between staging and production builds.
Stable fix pattern
- Remove noindex from production templates that serve public, indexable pages.
- Keep noindex only on intentionally private, duplicate, or low-value surfaces.
- Re-crawl priority pages after deploys to confirm the directive is gone.
How SitePulse will monitor this in v1
- Detects noindex directives on configured priority URLs.
- Flags changed indexability state between scan runs.
- Links the affected URL to approved remediation guidance instead of a generic health score.