Definition
Noindex is a rule, set in a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, that tells search engines not to include a page in their results.
Noindex explained
A noindex rule is written as a meta tag in the page's head, for example meta name robots with content noindex, or sent as an X-Robots-Tag header, which also works for PDFs and other non-HTML files. When a search engine crawls the page and sees the rule, it drops the page from its results.
The crawler has to be able to see the rule. If the same URL is blocked in robots.txt, the crawler never fetches it, never sees the noindex, and the URL may remain indexed from links elsewhere. This is a common mistake when trying to remove pages from search.
Typical uses include internal search results, thank-you pages, thin tag archives, staging sites and private resources. The most costly error is the opposite: a noindex left on live templates after launching from a staging environment, which quietly removes whole sections of a site from search.
Example
Your internal site-search result pages are appearing in Google with thin, duplicate content. Adding a noindex robots meta tag to that template, while leaving them crawlable, removes them from results over the following weeks.
Why it matters
Noindex is the correct tool for keeping pages out of search, and an accidental one can remove important pages without any visible sign on the site.
Related service
Technical SEO
Crawlability, indexing, structured data and rendering fixes so search engines and AI crawlers can read your site.
Technical SEO servicesSources
- Google Search Central: Introduction to robots.txt (updated 10 Dec 2025)
Published by Vidern, founded and led by Malhar Shah. Updated .
Find out what's holding your site back
Get a free SEO audit with prioritized fixes, delivered within 48 hours.
Related terms
- robots.txtrobots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which URLs they may or may not request.
- IndexingIndexing is when a search engine processes a crawled page and stores it in its index, making it eligible to appear in search results.
- Canonical tagA canonical tag is an HTML link element that tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when similar or duplicate versions exist.
- Staging environmentA staging environment is a private copy of a website where changes are built and tested before they go live on the production site.
- NosnippetNosnippet is a robots directive that stops Google showing a text snippet from a page in search results, including in AI Overviews and AI Mode.