In Google Search Console (GSC), within the coverage report, accessible on the left column under "coverage", we can take stock of the website’s indexing status. It’s a goldmine of information about a website’s good crawlability and indexing.
If you do not have a GSC account yet, you will first need to create one and validate your property.
The coverage report is as follows:
It contains 4 sections: Error, Valid with warnings, Valid and Excluded.
We recommend that you start with the "Valid" section in green.
Then, in a second step, the section that we recommend you to consult is "Valid with warnings" in orange.
This section is now associated with a single problem: indexed despite being blocked by the robots.txt file.
Warning’s explanation
The robots.txt is not a deindexing tool but a blocking tool. It is possible that certain pages are still visible to Google if a third-party website links to them.
Interpretation and correction
Click on the "valid with warnings" section:
Then, click on the "Details" subsection to display detailed lists:
If these are pages that need to be indexed: remove them from robots.txt as soon as possible to allow indexing.
Otherwise, in this case, you must remove these pages from robots.txt, deindex them properly, and then put them back in robots.txt.
The method is detailed here: deindex low added value pages.
The coverage reports’ other sections:
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