If you’ve been monitoring your WordPress website through Google Search Console, you might have encountered a frustrating issue: the [Feed Page] being excluded by the noindex tag. This can be alarming, especially if you’re concerned about your site’s SEO performance. Fortunately, there’s a straightforward solution to address this problem by using the “WP Robots Txt” plugin. In this post, I’ll guide you through the steps to fix this error and ensure your feed pages are handled correctly by search engines.
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Why Does This Error Occur?
Google Search Console might flag feed pages with the noindex tag due to the way WordPress handles these pages by default. Feed pages are primarily meant for RSS readers, not for indexing by search engines, which is why they often include a noindex directive. However, this can lead to confusion and errors in your Search Console, potentially affecting how your site is crawled and indexed.
To avoid unnecessary errors and ensure that Google is focusing on the right content, it’s important to exclude feed pages from being indexed by adding a specific rule to your robots.txt file.
How to Fix the Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag Error Feed Pages
Step 1: Install the “WP Robots Txt” Plugin
The first step in resolving this issue is to install the “WP Robots Txt” plugin. This plugin allows you to easily manage your robots.txt file directly from the WordPress dashboard, without needing to edit the file manually.
- Go to your WordPress dashboard.
- Navigate to Plugins > Add New.
- In the search bar, type “WP Robots Txt”.
- Click Install Now next to the “WP Robots Txt” plugin.
- Once installed, click Activate.
Step 2: Configure the Plugin to Disallow Feed Pages
After activating the plugin, the next step is to configure it to disallow feed pages in the robots.txt file.
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- You will see the robots.txt editor at the bottom of the page. Add the following line to disallow feed pages:
Disallow: /*/feed/- Click Save Changes to update your robots.txt file.
Step 3: Verify the Changes
After updating your robots.txt file, it’s important to verify that the changes have been applied correctly.
- Go to Search Console and use the URL Inspection Tool to check a feed URL.
- Ensure that the feed page is now excluded by
- the
Disallowdirective in robots.txt, and thenoindexissue is no longer reported.
Step 4: Tell Search Console to Validate Fix
- Go to Pages
- Click Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag under “Why pages aren’t indexed”
- Click “Validate Fix”
Conclusion
By following these simple steps, you can fix the [Feed Page] excluded by the ‘noindex’ tag error in Google Search Console. This ensures that your site’s SEO performance is not hindered by unnecessary feed page errors and that Google focuses on indexing the most important parts of your website. The “WP Robots Txt” plugin offers an easy way to manage your robots.txt file, giving you greater control over how search engines interact with your site.
