en
/login
Koval SEO

Pages ask to stay out of search only on mobile

In the reportPages serve noindex only to the smartphone crawler

mobile_only_noindex · Issue

Short answer

This appears when the smartphone response contains noindex and the desktop response does not, with the difference confirmed by a second observation of each profile. Check whether a mobile template, plugin or server rule adds the directive. Remove the difference if both versions should be indexable.

Severity: Critical. Fix it first when the page should be indexable: a mobile-only exclusion directive can hide an unintended indexing restriction from desktop checks.

Why it matters

Search engines recommend equivalent indexing directives on mobile and desktop. A device-specific exclusion can conflict with your intended indexing policy; this comparison does not establish what a search engine actually fetched.

What to do

  1. Compare the saved directive sets and smartphone noindex excerpts. Excerpts are bounded and may omit part of a long value.
  2. Check the mobile template, plugin and response-header configuration that adds the directive. Remove unintended noindex from the smartphone response.
  3. Run another audit to obtain a sufficient comparison of the same page.

What we read

We compare smartphone Chrome with desktop Chrome using two observations of each request profile. The smartphone crawl response supplies the first observation; we then collect a desktop response and a confirmation for each profile. These are browser request profiles, not observations of Googlebot.

The audit freezes a sample before comparison. Its size is the smaller of the eligible page count and the square root of the admitted representative page count, rounded up and limited to 10–100. Selection prioritises an eligible homepage, unresolved rechecks including dismissed findings, then pages from different sections. This does not guarantee every section or template.

A blocked request, cancellation, exhausted comparison budget, incomplete required artifact or challenge leaves the comparison unknown. The content and directive checks require four usable 200 HTML responses. A confirmed smartphone-only status failure belongs to the separate status check and leaves the other three checks unknown.

Both profiles read <meta name="robots">, <meta name="googlebot"> and the same unscoped or Googlebot-scoped X-Robots-Tag directives. All four observations need complete robots artifacts. Each profile's directive set must repeat, and the smartphone noindex excerpt must also repeat. The finding requires noindex on smartphone and none on desktop.

Example & evidence

Illustrative example — repeated responses for one page, not a live audit.

Desktop Chrome receives this head in both observations:

<head><title>Cakes | Example Bakery</title></head>

Smartphone Chrome receives this head in both observations:

<head><title>Cakes | Example Bakery</title><meta name="robots" content="noindex"></head>

Only the smartphone response contains noindex, so the page is reported. Remove the unintended directive from the mobile template.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: Compare the server HTML and response headers for smartphone Chrome and desktop Chrome, repeating each request. Inspect both robots meta names and the X-Robots-Tag fields; browser device emulation alone does not guarantee the same request.

Check again: Full audit — Run another audit after correcting the response. The finding closes only when sufficient retained evidence gives a clean result for the same requested page and native final-URL identity. An unread or unselected comparison does not establish a fix. Moving to another final URL, or serving the old final URL through another page, does not fix the original finding. Dismissal is separate from technical state and does not remove the page from recheck consideration.

Limits & sources

The reported sample N of M describes the frozen selection among admitted representative pages in this audit, not every page on the website. Selected pages with incomplete evidence remain in N. An unavailable sample has an explicit reason; it is not a zero-page success.

These requests do not establish what a search crawler received or how it indexed the page. Responses can differ by time, location or other request properties. Missing evidence never counts as a pass.

The check reads server HTML, not directives added by JavaScript. A Googlebot-scoped directive served identically to both profiles does not by itself create a mobile-only difference. The literal token none is not expanded into noindex by this predicate.

Confidence: High because the complete directive sets and smartphone noindex excerpts agree across two observations of each browser profile.

Sources

Editorial review: 3 November 2026