Why This Matters for Search & AI Visibility
Staging 'noindex' tags or canonical links accidentally pointing to a root template or old domain can silently de-index entire product categories after a deployment.
For a page to be indexable by Google and AI search engines, it must return HTTP 200 OK, contain no 'noindex' directive in <meta name="robots"> or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, and specify a self-referencing <link rel="canonical"> URL.
Staging 'noindex' tags or canonical links accidentally pointing to a root template or old domain can silently de-index entire product categories after a deployment.
Remove any unintended noindex directives, ensure HTTP 200 OK status without intermediate redirect chains, and set <link rel="canonical"> to the exact normalized URL of the page.