Deindexing
What is deindexing?
Deindexing is the removal of pages, or a whole site, from a search engine’s index, so they no longer appear in search results at all. It can be a penalty for serious spam, the result of a technical mistake such as a stray noindex tag, or something a site owner does on purpose.
Google can drop sites that break its spam policies badly, for example through a “Major spam problems” manual action for aggressive spam. But most deindexing in practice is self-inflicted: a noindex tag left on after a redesign, a robots.txt block on the whole site with no other way for Google to see the pages, server errors, or pages Google judges too thin or duplicated to keep in its index.
Deindexing on purpose is normal too. You might noindex internal search results, use Search Console’s Removals tool to hide a page urgently, or prune low-value pages.
Why deindexing matters for SEO
A deindexed page cannot get any organic traffic. For a whole site, that is the most severe outcome of black hat SEO and the first thing to rule out when traffic falls to near zero.
Because technical causes are common, check them before assuming a penalty. The fix for a stray noindex takes minutes; the fix for a spam penalty takes months.
How to check if a page is deindexed
- Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to see whether the URL is on Google and why not if it is not.
- Check the Page indexing report for excluded pages and the reasons given.
- Check the Manual actions and Security issues reports.
- Look for noindex in the page’s meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag header, and for robots.txt rules blocking the page.
- Fix the cause, then request indexing for important URLs and resubmit the sitemap.
Deindexing FAQ
How do I know if my site is deindexed?
Check the Page indexing report and URL Inspection in Search Console. A site: search gives a rough idea but is not a reliable count.
Can a deindexed site come back?
Yes. Fix the cause, then Google can recrawl and reindex. For a manual action, you also need an accepted reconsideration request.
Related SEO terms
Indexing is when a search engine analyses a crawled page and stores it in its index, so it becomes eligible to appear in search results.
Noindex is a robots directive, set in a meta tag or HTTP header, that tells search engines not to show a page in search results.
Manual action (Google penalty)
A manual action is a penalty a Google reviewer applies when a site breaks its spam policies, demoting or removing pages until the issue is fixed.
Robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which URLs they may and may not request.
Google Search Console is Google’s free tool that shows how your site performs in Google Search and flags indexing, security and spam problems.
Black hat SEOBlack hat
Black hat SEO is the use of tactics that break search engines’ spam policies, such as paid links, cloaking or keyword stuffing, to rank faster.