What is

noindex?

What is noindex?

Noindex is an instruction that asks search engines not to include a page in their index, so it is not shown in the search results. It is added as a meta robots tag in the page's HTML, or as an X-Robots-Tag in the HTTP header. The page is still available to visitors who go directly to it.

The meta tag looks like this: <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. The X-Robots-Tag is used especially for files that are not HTML, such as PDFs.

When should you use noindex?

• Thank-you pages and receipts after a form or purchase.

• Internal search results on the website.

• Logged-in areas, shopping cart and checkout.

• Thin pages that must exist for users, such as tag archives or filter combinations without value of their own.

• Campaign pages for ads that should not compete with the organic pages.

• Test and development environments (here you should also use a password).

The goal is for the index to contain only pages that provide value in search. That makes it easier for Google to understand the website and spend its time on the important pages.

Still, think twice before setting noindex on many pages at once. Pages that have links from other websites or bring traffic today should rather be improved or merged with another page using a 301 redirect. Noindex removes the page from search, but does not pass the value on to other pages.

Noindex vs robots.txt and canonical

The three tools are often confused, but they do different things:

• Noindex: The page can be crawled, but should not be shown in search.

• Robots.txt: asks robots not to crawl a page or folder. The page can still be indexed if others link to it.

• Canonical: says which of several similar pages is the main version. It is a hint, not an order.

A classic mistake is combining noindex with blocking in robots.txt. Then the search engine cannot crawl the page, and therefore never sees the noindex instruction. So if a page is to be removed from the index, it must be available for crawling until it has been removed.

The most serious mistake, however, is noindex on pages that should rank. It happens more often than you might think, typically when a new website is launched and the setting from the test environment comes along. Always check this at launch, and keep an eye on the report on indexing in Google Search Console. This is a standard part of our checks in technical SEO.

Related terms

• Indexing: the process noindex keeps a page out of.

• Robots.txt: controls crawling, not indexing, and must not block pages with noindex.

• Canonical: an alternative when pages are similar and the signals should be consolidated.

• Crawling: the search engine must be able to crawl the page to see noindex.

• See all the terms in the glossary.