Sitemap page set to noindex
A website's sitemap asks search engines to index the pages it lists, so a listed page that also tells search engines not to index it is contradicting itself. Silktide reports pages caught in this contradiction.
The entry says "please index this URL." A directive on the page says "do not index this page." When both apply to the same URL, search engines receive opposite instructions:
<!-- This page is listed in sitemap.xml, yet declares: -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Why this matters
This combination is almost always an accident - a staging noindex left in place after launch, or a sitemap generator that includes pages your marks as hidden. Search engines resolve the contradiction unpredictably: usually the noindex wins and the page silently vanishes from search, despite your sitemap asking for it.
The conflict also wastes crawl budget and litters search console reports with "submitted URL marked noindex" errors, making real problems harder to spot.
How to fix it
Decide what you actually want for each flagged page:
- If the page should appear in search, remove the noindex directive (check the robots meta tag, the
X-Robots-Tagresponse header, and anynonedirective). - If the page should stay out of search, remove it from the sitemap - usually by fixing the sitemap generator's settings so hidden pages are excluded.
How Silktide tests this
- Find pages whose only reason for being excluded from search is a noindex directive.
- Check whether the page's URL, or its , is listed in the website's XML sitemap.
- Flag the page when both are true.
Noindex pages that are not in the sitemap are reported separately, with lower severity, by Page set to noindex - being absent from the sitemap makes it more plausible the noindex is deliberate.