Roftr Labs

SEO

Indexability Checker

Find out whether search engines can index a page, and exactly what is stopping them.

30 checks a day, 20 an hour · results are kept for 24 hours, then deleted

How to use it

  1. Enter the address you want to checkType or paste it into the field marked "Address to check", including the https:// at the front. Check the exact URL you want indexed. A URL that redirects is not itself indexable — what matters is where it lands, and the tool follows it there.
  2. Press Check and wait a few secondsThe request runs from our server rather than from your browser, so your cache, your extensions and your login session cannot affect the answer. That is the point of it: you are seeing what an anonymous visitor sees.
  3. Read the verdict as two separate answersCan this page be indexed, and do its links pass authority? They are controlled by different directives and the tool never merges them, because "noindex, follow" and "index, nofollow" are completely different situations.
  4. Find which of the four places blocked itAn answer can hide in robots.txt, a robots meta tag, an X-Robots-Tag header or a canonical pointing elsewhere. Each blocker names its source and quotes the line, so you can open your own file and see the same thing.
  5. Do not confuse blocked crawling with blocked indexingrobots.txt stops crawling, not indexing — a blocked page can still appear in results from external links, and a noindex tag on it can never be seen, because seeing it requires the crawl that was just blocked. If you want a page out of the index, it has to be crawlable and carry noindex.
  6. Share or keep the result within 24 hoursThe result has its own link you can send to whoever needs to act on it. It is deleted 24 hours after the check ran, so save anything you need to keep — and re-run the check after a change rather than trusting an old link.

About this tool

This tool answers one question with evidence: can a search engine index this page? It checks the four places an answer can hide — robots.txt, the robots meta tag, the X-Robots-Tag header and the canonical — and cites the exact line, tag or header behind every conclusion.

The distinction it is most careful about: robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. A page blocked in robots.txt can still appear in results from external links — and a noindex tag on that page can never be seen, because seeing it requires the crawling that was just blocked.

Understanding the result

The verdict says whether the page can be indexed and whether its links pass authority. These are separate questions with separate directives, and the tool never collapses them into one.

Each blocker names its source, so you can open your own robots.txt or view-source and see the same line we did.

Indexability is judged on the final URL after redirects — a URL that redirects is not itself indexable at all; what matters is where it lands.

Example

Input

https://www.google.com/search?q=test

Output

Cannot be indexed
robots.txt line 1: Disallow: /search (User-agent: *)
Because crawling is blocked, a noindex on the page cannot be seen.

Limitations

  • The verdict models the documented behaviour of major search engines, not any one engine's live decisions. Google may still choose not to index a perfectly indexable page.
  • The robots meta tag is read from the raw HTML. A noindex injected by JavaScript is real to Google — which renders pages — but invisible here until our rendering checker ships.
  • An unreadable robots.txt is reported as unknown, not as permission. We do not guess in either direction.

Questions

My page is blocked in robots.txt. Why does it still show in Google?

Because robots.txt blocks crawling, not indexing. Google can index the URL from links elsewhere, showing it with no description. To remove it from the index, allow crawling and add a noindex directive — the reverse of what most people try first.

Which noindex wins if the meta tag and the header disagree?

The most restrictive directive wins. If either says noindex, the page is not indexed. The tool reports both sources separately so you can find which one to change.

Does a canonical pointing elsewhere block indexing?

No — it is a strong hint that another URL is the preferred version, and search engines may decline it. The tool reports it as worth knowing rather than as a blocker, because that is how search engines treat it.

Last updated 2026-08-16.

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