Blog blocked from indexing — CleanTalk appears to be the culprit

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  ecafrewolf · Member · Apr 18, 2025 at 6:51 am

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  Hi! I have a free WordPress.com plan and I’ve noticed a serious SEO issue:

  My /blog/ page is being blocked from appearing in Google search because of a noindex, nofollow directive in the meta robots tag. I tracked the source to a file from a plugin named cleantalk-spam-protect:

  /wp-content/plugins/cleantalk-spam-protect/js/apbct-public-bundle.min.js

  It’s generating this incredibly unhelpful line: setRequestHeader(“X-Robots-Tag”, “noindex, nofollow”)

  Is there a way I can remove or fully disable this plugin? It’s currently preventing my blog from showing up in search results, and Google Search Console is reporting a persistent noindex tag. Am I going to have to upgrade my WordPress plan just so I can have someone fix a problem that I didn’t create? I’m not especially fluent at code, so be patient with my ignorance. :)

  Thank you!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  staartmees · Member · Apr 18, 2025 at 7:13 am

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  We can’t help as that site isn’t running on the wordpress.com platform nor can we help with third party plugins. You must contact support of that culprit plugin to solve this problem yourself.

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  ecafrewolf · Member · Apr 19, 2025 at 3:38 am

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  Okay, so just checking, it wouldn’t help if I could get access to deactivate Clean Talk in my WordPress account?