What is noindex?
Published . Updated .
noindex: A rule, set in a page's robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, that tells search engines not to include the page in their index.
Google says the page must stay crawlable for the rule to work: if robots.txt blocks it, the crawler never sees the noindex. The header form works for files such as PDFs and images.
A page left on noindex by mistake drops out of the index that many AI assistants search, so it is one of the first things to check when a page never shows up.
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