Canonical vs noindex
A page should not tell search engines both to index it and to ignore it. Silktide finds pages that send exactly that contradiction, which usually means a template mistake.
This check fires when a page has a directive and a self-referencing - a canonical whose target is the same page. The canonical says "this is the authoritative URL to index" while noindex says "do not index this page":
<!-- Contradictory: noindex plus a canonical pointing at this same page -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/thank-you">
Why this matters
These two signals pull in opposite directions, and search engines resolve the conflict unpredictably - they may honor either one. In practice the combination almost always means a template applies a default canonical to every page while a separate rule adds noindex to pages meant to stay private (thank-you pages, previews, internal tools), or the reverse.
Resolving the conflict makes your indexing intent explicit, so pages you want in search get indexed and pages you want hidden stay hidden.
How to fix it
Decide what you actually want for the page, then remove one of the two signals:
- If the page should appear in search, remove the noindex directive (check both the robots meta tag and the
X-Robots-Tagresponse header). - If the page should stay out of search, remove the canonical tag from it, or stop your template from adding a self-referencing canonical to noindex pages.
How Silktide tests this
- Detect a noindex directive from the page's robots meta tag or
X-Robots-Tagresponse header (thenonedirective counts, as it implies noindex). - Look for a
<link rel="canonical">whose target is the page itself. URLs are compared by host and path:www, the scheme, trailing slashes, and the query string are ignored. - Flag the page when both are present.
- Unlike most SEO checks, this one deliberately runs on non-indexable pages - noindex pages are exactly where the conflict appears.