Find the technical problems that keep a page out of search

The 9 checks behind this

Each one is a check that runs, described by the engine itself. If a check changes, this page changes with it.

• HTTP status

  http_status

  The status of the final response after redirects. Fails on anything outside the 2xx range, because a URL that does not answer 200 has no document to index; warns on a 2xx that is not 200. Reports not_measurable when the audit was run against supplied HTML rather than a live fetch.

  Fixing it: Gives search engines a document to index at this URL at all.

• Redirect chain

  redirect_chain

  Every hop followed to reach the page. Fails on a loop, on any hop through plain http, and at 3 or more hops; warns above 1. Each hop costs crawl budget and adds latency for every visitor.

  Fixing it: Cuts latency for every visitor and stops crawl budget being spent on hops.

• HTTPS

  transport_security

  The scheme of the final URL and whether a Strict-Transport-Security header was returned. Plain http fails; https without HSTS warns, because the first request of a session can still go out in the clear.

  Fixing it: Removes the browser "not secure" warning and satisfies a confirmed ranking signal.

• robots.txt

  robots_txt

  The origin /robots.txt, parsed to RFC 9309: consecutive user-agent lines share a group, the most specific group wins, and the longest matching pattern decides with Allow winning ties. Fails when the audited path is disallowed for Googlebot; warns when the file is absent or declares no Sitemap. Distinct from the robots meta tag: a disallow here stops the crawl, not just the indexing.

  Fixing it: Lets crawlers read the page, so every other signal on it can be seen.

• Robots meta directives

  robots_meta

  Directives across meta robots, googlebot, bingbot and googlebot-news tags. A noindex or none directive fails the check outright because it removes the page from search regardless of every other signal; nofollow warns because it strips the page of its outbound crawl value.

  Fixing it: Removes a directive that keeps the page out of search regardless of its content.

• X-Robots-Tag header

  x_robots_tag

  Indexing directives delivered in the response header rather than the markup, including any bot-name prefix. A noindex or none fails; nofollow warns. This is checked separately from the robots meta tag because the two disagree often and a header-level noindex is invisible in the HTML.

  Fixing it: Removes a header-level block that keeps the page out of the index entirely.

• Canonical URL

  canonical

  Presence of <link rel="canonical">, whether its href is absolute in the markup, whether it resolves to the audited URL itself, and whether more than one canonical is declared. A missing or conflicting canonical lets parameter and trailing-slash variants compete with the page.

  Fixing it: Consolidates duplicate URL variants onto one address, so ranking signals stop being split.

• XML sitemap

  sitemap

  Discovery via the robots.txt Sitemap directive then the conventional paths, followed by XML validation. Fails when nothing retrieved parses, or when a file breaks the 50,000 URL or 50 MB protocol limits; warns on relative or cross-host <loc> values, on partial parse failures, and when a valid sitemap does not list the audited page.

  Fixing it: Shortens the delay between publishing a page and it being discovered.

• Server-rendered content

  render_dependency

  Visible text as a share of the response body, plus inline script share and server-rendered word count. Fails under 60 words alongside a script-heavy document, or below a 2% text ratio; warns below 5%. SEOAST executes no JavaScript, so this measures what a crawler sees before deciding whether to queue a rendered pass.

  Fixing it: Puts the content in the first response, where every crawler reads it, instead of behind a render pass that is neither fast nor guaranteed.