Home Page NOT INDEXED in Google (previously was) - need some help please

**shags38** · 4 Sep 2023, 05:22 AM

v157.b
site https://www.cliponearrings.net.au

site resolves as expected, no issues, currently 686 pages are indexed for the site (importantly all products, articles etc.) EXCEPT the home page url (domain) - there are no manual actions or Security issues in Google Search Console - Google returns a 404 page not found

Google suggests either a robots text *noindex is in place OR there is a noindex instruction in the header as the reason for not being able to index the url

If Indexing allowed? is "No", that means your site is returning a "noindex" tag or header that prevents Google from indexing the page and showing it in Google Search results. You'll have to remove this tag or header from the page before Google will index it.

The robots.txt does not have any noindex instruction in it BUT when viewing Page Source it shows this

(see below) - this does NOT show on any other page on the site (hence 686 pages are indexed) this may be the culprit but have no idea why that instruction content would be there?

So needless to say I am stumped in respect to how to resolve this - can anyone offer some insight as to where I should look / what the issue is?

thanks in advance,
Mike

this means no backlinks to that domain url are being recognised and the site is not showing in search at all including site: search

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="ltr" lang="en">
  <head>
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-390611117"></script>
<script>
    window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
    function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
    gtag('js', new Date());
    gtag('config', 'G-390611117');
</script>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title>Clip on Earrings | Australia | Clip Earrings</title>
  <meta name="keywords" content="earrings,clip on earrings,clip earrings,clip-on earrings,australia" />
  <meta name="description" content="Dazzlers clip on earrings offers the best range of quality clip earrings in Australia for non pierced ears with great prices and great customer service" />
  <meta name="author" content="Clip On Earrings" />
  <meta name="generator" content="shopping cart program by Zen Cart&reg;, https://www.zen-cart.com eCommerce" />
  <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=yes"/>


  <base href="https://www.cliponearrings.net.au/" />
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.cliponearrings.net.au/" />