Technical SEO · Glossary · Updated Apr 2026

Noindex

Definition

Noindex is a directive telling search engines not to include a URL in their index. Delivered via `<meta name="robots" content="noindex">` or an `X-Robots-Tag: noindex` HTTP header. Requires the page to be crawlable — a URL blocked by robots.txt can never be seen as noindex.

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Long definition

Noindex is the explicit instruction to remove a URL from search engine indexes. Once Googlebot fetches the page and sees the directive, the URL drops from the index within a few crawl cycles (days to weeks depending on recrawl frequency).

Three delivery methods:

HTML meta tag: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the <head>. Simple, applies per-page.
HTTP response header: X-Robots-Tag: noindex. Required for non-HTML resources (PDFs, images, DOCX). Scales cleanly via web-server config.
Per-crawler scoping: <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"> — targets only Googlebot, leaves other crawlers to decide.

Combined directives work: noindex, follow tells Google don't index this URL but still follow its outgoing links (historically useful for paginated archives). noindex, nofollow is stronger — drop both the URL and discount its link graph.

Compatibility matrix with other directives:

Directive combo	Result
`noindex`	URL excluded from index, links followed by default
`noindex, nofollow`	Excluded + link graph ignored
`noindex` + `Disallow` in robots.txt	Broken — Google can't read the noindex because it can't crawl
`noindex` + canonical pointing elsewhere	Mixed signal — Google may ignore canonical, respect noindex

Common misconceptions

"Noindex + robots.txt disallow is belt-and-braces." It's actually incompatible. Disallow prevents the crawl, so Google never sees the noindex tag. The URL may stay in the index with a generic title for months. Pick one, not both.
"Noindex removes backlinks' value." The URL is out of the index but follow (the default) still lets Google discover and count links from that URL to your other pages. Backlinks to a noindex URL still exist but don't feed any indexed URL's ranking (they'd need to redirect to a live URL to transfer equity).
"Eventually Google treats long-standing noindex as nofollow." Google confirmed in 2019 they treat a URL that has been noindex, follow for a long time similar to noindex, nofollow — stops following the outgoing links. Don't rely on noindex, follow for paginated link flow; use canonicals or sitemap structure instead.
"Noindex is the same as 404." No. A 404 tells crawlers "this doesn't exist"; over time they stop retrying. Noindex tells them "keep crawling this URL, just don't put it in the index" — the URL gets crawled forever.

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