SEO · Website glossary

noindex

Quick answer · What is noindex?

A robots directive asking supporting search engines not to include a page in search results.

IN PRACTICE

noindex: an example

A publicly accessible internal search page can send a noindex directive in supported markup or headers.

KEEP IN MIND

A crawler normally needs access to the page to discover its directive; robots.txt blocking can prevent that.

Put the idea to work

Frequently asked questions

What is a practical example of noindex?

A publicly accessible internal search page can send a noindex directive in supported markup or headers.

Can robots.txt blocking prevent discovery of a noindex directive?

A crawler normally needs access to the page to discover its directive; robots.txt blocking can prevent that.

Which concepts should I read alongside noindex?

robots.txt: A file at a site's root that gives compliant crawlers rules about which URLs they may request.
Indexing: The processing and potential storage of page information in a search engine's searchable index.