The noindex tag is a directive used in SEO to prevent a specific webpage from appearing in search engine results. When applied, it tells search engines like Google not to include the page in their index, meaning that users won’t see the page in search results, even though it may still be accessible by its URL.
How Noindex Works
The noindex tag is typically placed within a webpage’s HTML, either as a meta tag in the <head> section or as an X-Robots-Tag in the HTTP header. When search engine crawlers see this tag, they understand that the page should not be included in the search index. However, the page can still be crawled, meaning the search engine might still access and evaluate the content, but it won’t show it in search results.
Here’s an example of how the tag looks in HTML:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">When to Use Noindex
The noindex tag is useful in certain situations:
- Private or sensitive pages: Pages like login forms, internal tools, or thank-you pages often don’t need to be found through search engines.
- Duplicate content: If you have several versions of the same content, you might want to use noindex on duplicates to avoid confusing search engines.
- Low-quality content: Pages with thin or poor-quality content that don’t add value can be excluded from search results using the noindex tag.
Important Considerations
- Noindex doesn’t stop crawling: Even though the page won’t show in search results, search engines can still crawl and read the page. To prevent both crawling and indexing, a different directive (like disallow in the robots.txt file) must be used.
- Noindex and link equity: Over time, pages with a noindex tag might not pass any link authority (link juice) to other pages. This can impact the overall SEO performance of your site if many noindexed pages are linking to other parts of your site.