"Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt": what it means and how to fix it

What it means

Google can't visit the page, but lists it anyway because other pages link to it. The search result usually has no description.

Common causes

• A robots.txt rule blocks a page that other pages link to.

How to fix it

• If you want the page on Google, remove the robots.txt rule.
• If you want the page off Google, let Google visit it and add a noindex tag. Google has to visit the page to see noindex.

How to find these pages

In Search Console, open Indexing > Pages and click the "Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt" row. Search Console shows up to 1,000 example pages. CrawlCoach checks up to 50,000 pages per site and sorts them by reason, so you know which pages to fix first.