WordPress
WordPress noindex: the Reading settings checkbox
The Discourage search engines box writes a noindex meta tag into every page. The exact setting, how to undo it, and why it comes back.
WordPress writes a sitewide robots noindex tag when "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is enabled under "Settings > Reading." Sign in to wp-admin, clear that checkbox, save the change, then inspect the affected page or run the indexability checker to confirm the noindex directive has disappeared.
Why WordPress does this
WordPress has one site-wide switch: Settings, then Reading, the checkbox labeled "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". The platform's own documentation says that when it is checked, WordPress "Causes "<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />" to be generated into the <head> </head> section (if wp_head is used)" of the site, meaning every page. Before WordPress 5.3 the same switch rewrote robots.txt to "User-agent: * Disallow: /" instead. Two dashboard tells appear while it is on: Settings, Writing hides its Update Services box behind the notice "WordPress is not notifying any Update Services because of your blog's privacy settings", and the documentation carries the caveat that "it is up to search engines to honor your request".
Check it right now
Before changing anything, confirm what a crawler actually sees. The check is free, takes one URL and needs no account.
How to fix it
- Sign in to wp-admin.
- Open Settings, then Reading.
- Untick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site".
- Click "Save Changes".
- Open Settings, then Writing, and confirm the Update Services box is visible again; it is hidden while the switch is on.
- View source on one page and confirm the noindex meta tag is gone, or run the URL through the free indexability checker below.
Why it happens again
The switch exists for the build phase and rarely comes back off cleanly: a site redesigned on its live domain keeps the box on at launch, a migration copies a staging database with it still set, and any admin can flip it in one click with no warning to the rest of the team. Nothing in WordPress separates an intentional flip from an accidental one.
stillindexed re-checks the URLs you give it every 30 minutes on Starter and alerts when a directive changes, at most 30 minutes after it does. It is a monitor rather than a crawler: it watches a list you choose and tells you when one of seven things changes. Card first, no trial, and a 30 day refund.
Catching it next time
Fixing it once is the easy half. The setting that caused this can be changed again by anyone with access, and the page will keep returning 200 while it happens.
Other ways WordPress loses pages
- my WordPress staging site is indexed by Google
- my WordPress robots.txt is blocking pages that should be crawled
- A WordPress page's canonical tag points at the wrong URL, usually because two SEO plugins, a theme or a code filter disagree about who writes it.
- my WordPress migration lost pages from search
- The http, www or non-www version of a WordPress site takes an extra hop before reaching the final URL, because the host and WordPress each redirect once.
A noindex tag hiding the site from search, on other platforms
Sources
Every claim about WordPress above is from their own documentation, read on 2026-08-30. Platforms change their settings; if one of these is out of date, their page wins and we would like to know.