What does the `<meta name="robots" content="noindex">` meta tag do?

The meta tag

tells search engines not to index the page's content and not to include it in search results. This means the page can still be accessible to users via a direct link, but it should not appear in search results.

#Key features

• The meta tag operates at the level of the page itself, unlike robots.txt, which only regulates crawling.

• The page can still be crawled, but its content will not be placed in the index.

• The meta tag can be set either for all bots (robots) or for specific ones, for example:

  html

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  <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">

#Important

For the search engine to see this meta tag, it must be able to access the page. If it is blocked via Disallow in robots.txt, the bot may simply never read the meta tag, and the page could still end up in the results via external links, but without any text.