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The Madison Avenue Field GuideA field guide to marketing & advertising, by Brandon Mina

GlossarySEO & ContentNoindex Directive

SEO & Content

Noindex Directive

A meta robots or HTTP header instruction telling search engines not to include a page in their search results.

By Brandon MinaCEO, BrandPilot AIUpdated November 2026

Short answer

A noindex directive is a meta robots tag or HTTP header instruction telling search engines not to include a page in their search results. It is used for thin, private, duplicate or utility pages such as internal search results or thank-you pages. Crawlers must be able to access the page to see the directive.