meta-data glossary

reference pages for the META SEO Inspector Google Chrome extension.

about robots meta tag

Controls whether search engine spiders are allowed to index a page and follow its links or not.

usage examples

index and follow links :
<meta name="robots" content="all">
no index but do follow links :
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
index but do not follow links :
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">

common content values

Directive
all There are no restrictions for indexing or serving. This directive is the default value and has no effect if explicitly listed.
noindex Do not show this page, media, or resource in search results, this is the most effective way to remove URLs from the index when crawling is allowed.
nofollow Do not follow any links on a page or pass along any link equity.

other content values

Directive
noimageindex Do not index any images on a page.
none Equal to using both the noindex and nofollow tags.
noarchive Should not show a cached link to this page on a SERP.
nositelinkssearchbox Do not show a sitelinks search box in the search results for this page.
nosnippet Do not show a snippet of this page (i.e. meta description) of this page on a SERP.
unavailable_after No longer index this page after a particular date.
indexifembedded Google is allowed to index the content of a page if it's embedded in another page. Only has an effect if it's accompanied by noindex.
max-snippet: [number] Use a maximum of [number] characters as a textual snippet for this search result.
max-image-preview: [setting] Set the maximum size of an image preview for this page in a search results. Settings can be "none", "standard" or "large".
max-video-preview: [number] Use a maximum of [number] seconds as a video snippet for videos on this page in search results.
notranslate Don't offer translation of this page in search results.

obsolete content values

Directive
follow Do follow all the links on a page and pass equity to the linked pages even if the page isn't indexed; it’s the default, so it is not needed.
index Do index a page. Note that you don’t need to add this meta tag; it’s the default, so it is not needed.
noodyp/noydir Prevents search engines from using a page’s DMOZ description as the SERP snippet for this page. But, DMOZ was retired in early 2017, making this tag obsolete.