GEO-014 · Sitemap-listed and linked routes are indexable
A route you list in a sitemap or link to, but answer with an error, noindex or a robots disallow, sends search engines contradictory signals.
- Evidence class
- E1
- Weight
- 3
- Subject
- each route group
- Scope
- URL/repo
- Default severity
- high
- Lifecycle
- stable
- Platforms
- Any web stack
- Readiness cap
- 40, when direct evidence shows every sampled route is noindex
Sub-checks
A subject fails if any evaluated sub-check fails, and passes only when every applicable sub-check ran and passed. url sub-checks need a URL; both can also run from source.
| Sub-check | Scope | Checks that |
|---|---|---|
http_status | url | sampled URLs answer 200 after redirects |
meta_noindex | both | no noindex or none in robots metadata |
header_noindex | url | no noindex in X-Robots-Tag |
robots_disallow | both | robots.txt does not disallow Googlebot or Bingbot from the route |
Preconditions
- Subjects are routes listed in a sitemap or linked from crawled server HTML
Remediation
Either make the route indexable (remove noindex, fix the status, allow it in robots.txt) or remove it from the sitemap and internal links.
Fix class: literal noindex guarded; otherwise contextual
G1Remove a literal noindex from a sitemap-listed route — guarded, requires V4
Known false positives
- Intentionally noindexed pages that remain in a sitemap; remove them from the sitemap or suppress with a reason.
Evidence
Platform policies and standards are cited as such; anything else is labelled guidance. These links were carried forward from the specification and should be rechecked before quoting them as current policy.
- Google: robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag (platform-policy)
- RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol (standard)
- sitemaps.org protocol (standard)
Run it
npx geopilot explain GEO-014
npx geopilot scan . --rule GEO-014