Help Centre
Getting started
Robotsread checks one URL at a time for indexability. Here is how it works:
- Paste a full URL — include the protocol (https:// or http://). Just example.com will not be accepted.
- Press Check — the tool fetches the page you entered and that origin's robots.txt independently. If one fetch fails, the other can still produce a valid signal.
- Read the verdict — one clear answer: blocked (with the exact rule that blocks you), indexable (no blocking signals found), or unknown (the checker could not reach the page, or a platform limitation applies).
- Drill into the signals — below the verdict, each of the four signals is shown individually with its status, so you can see exactly which rule fired.
No account, sign-up, or payment is required. Just go to the checker page and paste a URL.
Frequently Asked Questions
This checker cannot reach sites hosted behind Cloudflare. Cloudflare's network blocks requests that originate from this kind of infrastructure. The "unknown" verdict means the checker could not evaluate the page, not that the page has a problem.
If the verdict panel shows a Cloudflare limitation banner, that is the reason. No amount of fixing your robots.txt or meta tags will change the verdict — it is a constraint of the checker itself. The only workaround is to check the page using another tool (such as a browser extension, curl, or Google's own URL Inspection tool) that can reach the site directly.
The verdict tells you which signal blocked the page:
- Blocked by robots.txt — a Disallow rule in your site's robots.txt matches the URL. Edit your robots.txt to remove or refine that rule. Remember that robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing — a page that is allowed by robots.txt can still be blocked by other signals.
- Blocked by meta robots — the page contains <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. Remove or change that tag in the page's HTML.
- Blocked by X-Robots-Tag — the server returned an X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header. This is often set at the server configuration level (Apache, Nginx, or your hosting platform). Remove the header for that path.
- Canonical warning — the canonical URL points to a different domain. Search engines may choose to index the canonical target instead of this page. If that is intentional, you can ignore this warning. If not, update or remove the canonical link.
After fixing the issue, re-check the URL to confirm the verdict changes to "indexable".
Yes. The URL must include the full protocol — e.g. https://www.example.com/some-page. Entering example.com or www.example.com without a scheme will produce an error prompting you to add it.
No. Robotsread is stateless. The URL you enter is sent to the server, used to fetch the page and its robots.txt, and discarded once the verdict is returned. No record of the URL is kept server-side. No cookies are set, no analytics scripts run, and no data is shared with third parties.
See the Privacy Policy for the full details.
A Pro plan with batch checks and API access is planned but not yet available. It has not been built and cannot be purchased today. The pricing page lists the planned features for reference, but nothing on that page is purchasable.
If and when the Pro plan launches, it will be announced on the pricing page and in these help docs.
These are two separate layers of control:
- robots.txt tells search crawlers "do not fetch this page". If a crawler respects the rule, it will never see the page's content at all. But robots.txt is a request, not a guarantee — a crawler can ignore it.
- Meta robots (or X-Robots-Tag) tells the crawler "do not index this page even if you have fetched it". This is a stronger signal: it applies after the page has been retrieved.
A page can be blocked by one and not the other. Robotsread checks all four signals separately and reports the strictest verdict — if any signal blocks the page, the verdict is "blocked".
Known limitations
Honest boundaries of this service
- Cloudflare limitation: sites behind Cloudflare cannot be reached. The verdict will show "unknown" with a clear explanation that this is a checker limitation, not a finding about the page.
- Single-URL only: only one URL can be checked at a time. Batch checks and an API are planned but not built.
- No crawling: the tool fetches only the URL you enter and that origin's robots.txt. It does not follow links, crawl the site, or discover related pages.
- No ranking analysis: the verdict reports what the indexability rules say, not what any search engine actually does in practice. A page that is "indexable" by the rules may still not appear in search results for many other reasons (content quality, competition, site authority, etc.).
- No alerts or re-checks: there is no email sender, so the service cannot send alerts, reminders, or scheduled re-check reports. Each check is a one-off request.
- No Pro plan yet: batch checks and API access do not exist yet. The pricing page lists planned features for transparency only.
- No legal entity: the service is operated by an individual who has not yet registered a company or designated a jurisdiction. No binding legal agreements can be formed.
Contact us
Support is not yet reachable by email
The operator of Robotsread has not yet set up a mailbox, helpdesk, or any other channel for receiving support inquiries. There is no support email address, phone number, or contact form on this domain that can actually deliver a message.
If you find a bug or have a question, your best option is to re-check the URL in case a transient issue has resolved, or review the questions above to see if your query is already answered.
Do not submit a URL via an invented contact form or email address — there is no mailbox to receive it, and the site does not silently discard form submissions. Any contact method published here in the future will be tested and confirmed working before it is listed.
This requirement — a working support contact channel — has been recorded as a pending owner action.