Audit rules
Contradictory Robots Directives
Opposite directives (index and noindex, follow and nofollow) for the same agent class, across the robots meta tags and the X-Robots-Tag header. In a QuikSEO audit, a failure of this rule has warning severity and counts against the score. Below are the exact condition, its exceptions and the sources behind it, followed by the other rules of the same group.
indexing.contradictory_directivesWarning01 — Definition
How This Rule Is Checked
The rule is a pure function of the fetched page: no extra requests, no account settings. The same input always gives the same result.
Rule Severity and Score
- Rule id
indexing.contradictory_directives- Group
- Indexing
- Severity of a failure
- Warning
- Counts in the score
- Yes, whenever it applies to the page
- Required for a score
- No
Condition and Exceptions
- Condition
- Conflicting directives for the same agent class (e.g. index and noindex, or meta says index while header says noindex) → review
- Exceptions
- —
Sources and Project Decision
- Sources
- Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag specifications (Google Search Central, Q36)
- Project decision
- Severity warning is a project decision [D].
02 — Indexing
Other Rules in This Group
The other checks of the same group, each with its own condition and sources.
- llms.txt Fileindexing.llms_txt
- Links Not Followedindexing.nofollow_page
- Images Blocked From Indexingindexing.noimageindex
- Page Blocked From Indexingindexing.noindex
- Blocked by robots.txtindexing.robots_txt_blocked
- robots.txt Missingindexing.robots_txt_missing
- Not Indexed in Search Consoleindexing.search_console
- Sitemap Not Declared in robots.txtindexing.sitemap_not_declared
- Soft 404indexing.soft_404