No conflicting robots directives

meta_robots_conflict

Checks for conflicting robots meta directives.

What does this rule check?

When multiple robots meta tags exist with different directives, or when the HTML meta tag conflicts with the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, search engines must resolve the conflict. They typically apply the most restrictive directive.

Why is this important?

Conflicting robots directives may result in stricter crawling/indexing behavior than intended. A noindex in any source will override index directives elsewhere.

How to fix

Ensure a single, consistent robots directive. Remove duplicate meta robots tags and check HTTP headers for conflicts.

Examples

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<!-- Conflicting! Google will use noindex -->

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<!-- Single, clear directive -->

Agent fix snippet

Copy this snippet and paste it into your AI coding agent to fix this issue automatically.

Search for all robots directives:
1. <meta name="robots"> tags (remove duplicates)
2. X-Robots-Tag HTTP header

Keep only one consistent directive.