Syntax#
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">
<meta name="googlebot" content="max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large">name="robots" applies to all crawlers; a bot name like googlebot targets one.
Common directives#
| Directive | Effect |
|---|---|
noindex |
Don’t show this page in search results |
nofollow |
Don’t follow links on this page |
none |
Same as noindex, nofollow |
nosnippet |
No text snippet or video preview; also excludes content from AI Overviews |
max-snippet:[n] |
Limit snippet length (-1 = no limit) |
max-image-preview:large |
Allow large image previews (helps Discover) |
noimageindex |
Don’t index images on the page |
unavailable_after:[date] |
Remove from results after a date |
Things to know#
- The default (no tag) is
index, follow. - Google must be able to crawl the page to see the tag — don’t block it in robots.txt.
- For PDFs and other non-HTML files, use the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.
- Check a page’s live directives with URL Inspection in Search Console.
Related: noindex, robots.txt.