Noindex

What is noindex?

Noindex is an instruction that asks search engines not to include a page in their index, so the page does not appear in search results. You set noindex in a meta robots tag or in the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. Google must still be able to crawl the page in order to read the instruction.

Why is noindex important?

• Clean search results: pages with no search value stay out of Google.
• A tidier index: search engines concentrate on your important pages.
• Practical to use: pages such as thank-you pages and internal search results stay out of sight.

Examples of noindex

• <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> on a thank-you page after a purchase
• Internal search results pages of an online store
• A staging site or draft page

How do you use noindex?

Add the instruction to pages you do not want in Google, and do not block those pages in the robots.txt file, or Google will not read the instruction. After a launch, check that noindex has not ended up on important pages by mistake. Read more under technical SEO.