What Is a Meta Robots Tag?
The meta robots tag is an HTML element that tells search engines how to handle a specific page — whether to index it, follow its links, or both.
Common Directives
The most frequently used values are index/noindex (whether the page should appear in search results) and follow/nofollow (whether links on the page should pass ranking value). Additional directives like noarchive (prevent cached versions) and nosnippet (prevent a text preview in results) offer more granular control.
Syntax
A standard implementation looks like: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”>, placed in the page’s <head>. This example tells search engines not to index the page itself, but to still follow and pass value through any links it contains — useful for pages like paginated archives that shouldn’t rank individually but still lead to content worth crawling.
WRITTEN BY
Annabelle Cochrane
MANAGING DIRECTOR & SEO SPECIALIST
Annabelle holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) from QUT and works directly with every ALC Consulting client. She’s based on the Sunshine Coast and works with businesses across Australia.
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