Noindex
Definition
Noindex is a directive you add to a page's HTML (via meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header) that tells search engines not to include the page in their search index. Unlike robots.txt (which blocks crawling), noindex allows crawling but prevents the page from appearing in search results. Common uses include: thank-you pages, internal search results pages, staging/development pages, admin pages, paginated archive pages, and thin content pages that add no search value. Implementation: add <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to the page's <head>, or set the X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header. Important: if a page is blocked by robots.txt AND has noindex, the noindex may never be seen by Google since it can't crawl the page.
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