What is noindex?
Nati Elimelech·Updated 27.07.2026 noindex is a rule in a meta tag or HTTP header that keeps a page out of the search index and out of results.
noindex has two forms with the same meaning: a meta tag inside the page, and an X-Robots-Tag header in the server response. Google writes that when it crawls a page and finds the rule, it drops the page from results entirely, even if other sites link to it. Every search engine that crawls the page reads the rule.
How noindex works
This is what the two forms look like:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
X-Robots-Tag: noindexThe tag sits in the page’s HTML, and the header arrives in the server response, which makes it the only way for anything that is not HTML: PDFs, images and video files. Google documents that everything here is case-insensitive: the name, the value and the header. And the removal is not immediate: it happens only on the next crawl, which Google says can lag months on less important pages, and the URL Inspection tool in Search Console speeds it up. And because the rule is only read during a crawl, noindex does not save crawl budget: Google fetches the page and only then drops it.
How noindex relates to SEO and GEO
noindex is the precise tool for taking pages out of results: thank-you pages, print versions, internal search results, pages built for a campaign that ended. Google’s answers lean on the index, so noindex controls those too: Google documents that to serve as a source in AI Overviews and AI Mode a page must be indexed and allowed to show a snippet, the short text preview in results, and lists noindex among the controls for appearing there.
The difference between noindex and robots.txt
noindex takes a page out of results even after it is already indexed. robots.txt cannot do that: it only stops the crawler from reaching the page in the first place. And because noindex is only read during a crawl, the “block and noindex together” combination cancels itself: a rule no crawler reaches does not exist.
Questions about noindex
Can I put noindex inside robots.txt?▼
noindex inside robots.txt does not work, and at Google it stopped working on September 1, 2019: in July 2019 Google announced that on that date it would retire the code handling unsupported rules in the file, noindex among them. Google's current documentation lists four supported fields, user-agent, allow, disallow and sitemap, and noindex is not one of them. No other engine has ever documented support for the rule, so a line like that is decoration.
The alternatives Google listed in that same announcement: noindex in a meta tag or HTTP header, 404 or 410 status codes, password protection, Disallow in robots.txt, and the URL removal tool in Search Console.
Why does a page with noindex still show up in Google?▼
A page with noindex disappears from results only after Google recrawls it and sees the rule. Google writes this can take months, depending on the page's importance, and the URL Inspection tool in Search Console speeds it up.
What happens when you combine noindex with a robots.txt block?▼
noindex combined with a robots.txt block cancels itself: Google stresses that for the rule to work, the page must not be blocked from the crawler, because a crawler that never enters never sees the rule. Bing says the same in its own words: it needs to crawl the page to see the tag. The "both, to be safe" reflex is the most common way a page stays stuck in results.
Do AI bots respect noindex?▼
Only two engines document what noindex does to them. Google writes that to appear as a source in AI Overviews and AI Mode a page must be indexed, so noindex removes it from those answers too, and Microsoft documents that at Bing, noindex also marks the content as off-limits for training its generative AI models.
As of July 2026, OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity document no treatment of noindex at all: the opt-outs they offer run through robots.txt only.