How to fix "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" in Search Console
"Excluded by 'noindex' tag" means Google crawled the page, found a noindex directive in a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header, and followed it by leaving the page out of the index. If you meant to noindex the page, this is the correct result. If you did not, find the setting that added the directive, remove it, and ask Google to recrawl.
On WordPress, unintended noindex usually comes from the Discourage search engines checkbox, a staging site's settings copied to production, or a site-wide noindex on a post type or taxonomy.
Step by step
1. Separate intended from unintended
Open Indexing → Pages → Excluded by 'noindex' tag and export the examples. Expected entries include author archives, internal search results, thank-you pages, empty archives and anything you deliberately set to noindex. Hydrogen SEO noindexes author archives, search results and the 404 page automatically. Flag only the URLs you want in Google.
2. Check Discourage search engines
Go to Settings → Reading. If Discourage search engines from indexing this site is checked, every page gets noindex, nofollow whatever your other settings say. This is the usual cause when a whole site is listed here. It often gets switched on while building on staging, then carried across in a migration. Uncheck it and save. Hydrogen SEO's health score on the Dashboard flags this as "Site is hidden from search engines".
3. See exactly where the noindex is
Check a flagged URL two ways:
curl -s https://example.com/services/ | grep -i 'name="robots"'
curl -sI https://example.com/services/ | grep -i x-robots-tag
The first finds the meta tag, the second the HTTP header. A header usually comes from server config, a security plugin or the host, and no WordPress SEO setting will remove it. Hosts sometimes add X-Robots-Tag: noindex on staging or temporary domains.
4. Check post type and taxonomy defaults
Open Hydrogen SEO → Robots. The Post Types and Taxonomies tables each have a Noindex switch per type. If Posts, Pages, Products or a category taxonomy shows Noindex on and you want those indexed, switch it off. Changes save automatically. The Sitemap screen shows a NoIndex badge next to any type set this way, which is a quick way to spot it.
5. Check the individual page
Open the page in the editor, press ⌘E / Ctrl+E for the SEO Settings sheet and open Robots Meta. If No Index is on, switch it off and save. Per-post settings override site-wide defaults, so a single page can be noindexed while its type is not. For the homepage, check the Noindex switch on Hydrogen SEO → Homepage.
6. Rule out a second plugin
View source and count the robots meta tags. More than one means two plugins, or a theme and a plugin, are both printing directives, and the stricter one wins. Deactivate the old SEO plugin once your settings are imported. Membership, coming-soon and maintenance-mode plugins also commonly add noindex.
7. Request indexing and validate
Inspect a fixed URL with URL Inspection and click Test live URL: Indexing allowed? should say Yes. Then click Request indexing for the most important pages; there is a daily quota. Finally, click Validate fix on the report so Google rechecks the rest.
What the status means
noindex is an instruction, not a hint, so Google follows it reliably, but only if it can crawl the page. That is why a noindexed page must stay crawlable in robots.txt. If a page is both blocked and noindexed, Google never sees the noindex and may keep the URL indexed from links. Fixing Blocked by robots.txt covers that combination.
When to leave it alone
Leave it for pages you do not want in search: thank-you pages, login pages, thin tag archives, internal search and filtered views. A long list here is not a problem if every URL on it is one you chose to exclude. To add noindex deliberately, see noindexing a page in WordPress.
Common questions
How long after removing noindex will a page be indexed?
After Google recrawls it, usually days to a few weeks. Request indexing speeds up the recrawl for key pages but does not guarantee indexing.
Why does Search Console show noindex when I cannot find it?
Check the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, and check whether Google's last crawl was before your fix. The URL Inspection live test shows the current state.
Does Discourage search engines fully hide my site?
It adds noindex, nofollow to every page, which search engines respect, but anyone can still visit the site. It is not password protection.