noindex
Definition
noindex is a robots directive that asks compliant crawlers not to include a URL in their search index.
By Vinespire Editorial Team, Editorial ·
This term is part of the full AI search glossary.
Full definition
Publishers apply noindex via a meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. The page may still be crawled if allowed by robots.txt; blocking fetch entirely can prevent crawlers from seeing the noindex directive.
Use noindex for thank-you pages, internal search results, thin filters, staging mirrors, and other URLs that should stay out of results. Removing noindex is required before a page can be indexed again.
noindex is primarily a search-index control. Training or browsing bots may still fetch the URL if robots.txt allows; separate agent rules address those cases. See Meta Robots, X-Robots-Tag, and Indexability.
Example
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />