Crawl and index controls
noindex
noindex is a rule, set with a meta tag or an HTTP header, that tells search engines like Google not to show a page in their results.
In plain words
When Googlebot crawls the page and sees the rule, Google drops the page from Search results entirely, even if other sites link to it.
Google doesn’t support noindex inside robots.txt. It only works as a meta tag or as an HTTP header.
Example
A web shop adds noindex to its internal search result pages, so those lists don’t show up in Google.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">Why it matters for AI search
Google says a page must be indexed to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A noindexed page can’t appear there.
The crawler must be allowed to fetch the page to see the rule. If robots.txt blocks the page, Google never sees noindex, and the page can still show up in results.
What you can do
- Use noindex for pages that shouldn’t be found, such as thank-you pages or internal search results.
- Don’t block those same pages in robots.txt.
- For PDFs and images, send noindex in an X-Robots-Tag header instead.
Often confused with
- robots.txt Disallow
- Disallow stops crawling. noindex stops indexing. They do different jobs.
- nosnippet
- nosnippet keeps the page in results but hides its text preview.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Block Search indexing with noindex
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
Facts and sources last checked on 19 October 2026.
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