Definition

Noindex is a directive — set via a `<meta name="robots" content="noindex">` tag or an `X-Robots-Tag` HTTP header — that instructs search engines to drop a page from their index.

For Google to honour a noindex directive, Googlebot must be able to crawl the page; blocking the URL in `robots.txt` prevents Google from seeing the directive, so the page may stay indexed via inbound links. Noindex differs from a canonical tag: a canonical hints which URL to prefer, while noindex removes the page from the index entirely. The default behaviour when no directive is set is `index, follow`.

Examples

• Internal-only page

  A staging URL adds `<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">` so Google removes it from search results on the next crawl, while still following links from the page to discover other content.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Block search indexing with noindex

Related terms

• robots.txt
  A plain-text file at the root of a domain that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not request.
• Canonical Tag
  An HTML element that tells search engines which URL is the master copy when the same or similar content exists at multiple addresses.
• Indexing
  The process by which a search engine analyses a fetched page and stores information about it so the page can later be returned in search results.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit