robots.malformed-directive

What to change

A finding of this rule on a page carries the exact edits for that page: the markup it quotes, and what to write instead.

When it runs

Runs on every SEO audit: of a page, a crawl, a build directory or HTML. A warning is a problem that costs a page ranking, clicks or citations. Each finding takes 5 points off the page's score.

The severity here is the rule's usual one: a finding can be raised or lowered when the page gives a reason.

Run it, or skip it

Check a page for this rule alone, after a fix for instance:

npx @rivi-software/agentic-seo-check audit https://example.com --rule robots.malformed-directive

Or from an assistant, with the MCP tool seo_audit_page:

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "rules": [
    "robots.malformed-directive"
  ]
}

To leave it out of an audit, pass --disable robots.malformed-directive on the command, or disableRules: ["robots.malformed-directive"] to a tool.

• Warningrobots.noindexThe page tells search engines not to index it (meta robots or X-Robots-Tag).
• Inforobots.nofollowThe page tells search engines not to follow its links.
• Inforobots.conflictingThe page's robots directives contradict each other (index and noindex, or follow and nofollow); Google applies the more restrictive one.
• Warningrobots.unavailable-afterThe page sets unavailable_after (meta robots or X-Robots-Tag) to a date that has passed, so Google no longer shows it in search results (warning), or to a date Google cannot read, so it ignores the rule (info).
• Inforobots.max-image-preview-missingAn article page sets no max-image-preview, so Google Discover shows it with a small thumbnail instead of a large image.
• Warningmeta-refresh.redirectA <meta http-equiv="refresh"> sends visitors to another URL. Google reads an instant one as a permanent redirect (info) and a delayed one as a temporary redirect (warning), and prefers a redirect from the server.