Index check

Our server fetches the HTML and the headers of the URL; your browser then reads every index rule in the head — `meta name="robots"`, directive by directive, with its value and any party — and every rule in the header, where `X-Robots-Tag` states what a head may not say. Indexing and passing links on are two different questions and this tool separates them: `noindex` is about the index, `nofollow` about the links the page hands on.

Then the address. With `rel=canonical` a page states which address it means as its own, and this tool reads every canonical block — not only the first — because two blocks with different addresses are a contradiction in the head itself: every crawler picks one. A block that does not become an address here, a fragment, another scheme or another host than the measured URL are named by name, next to the address this measurement itself reached.

What the tool does not do stands on the card with it: it does not ask a search engine what is indexed, it reads only the HTML our server received, and it does not judge what a crawler makes of opposite statements. robots.txt is a crawl rule elsewhere on the host; that belongs with Robots and sitemap.