Noindex tag generator + checker

What the robots meta tag controls

The <meta name="robots"> tag is the most precise way to tell search engines how to handle a single page. While robots.txt operates at the path level and controls crawling, the robots meta tag operates at the page level and controls indexing, link following, snippet display, and image previews.

Most pages don't need a robots meta tag — the default is 'index, follow', which is exactly what you usually want. You add the tag when you specifically want to exclude a page from search (noindex), prevent link equity from flowing through it (nofollow), or constrain how it appears in results (max-snippet, max-image-preview).

When to use noindex (and when not to)

Noindex is the right tool for a small, specific set of pages — and the wrong tool for almost everything else. A page that should be noindexed is one that exists for users but offers no value as a search-result destination.

• Internal search-results pages — duplicate, low-quality from Google's view.
• Filter/sort variants of category pages that don't add unique content.
• Thank-you and confirmation pages users only reach after a form submit.
• Staging or beta versions of pages that mirror production content.
• Tag archives that aggregate the same posts as the main blog index.

How the noindex checker handles directives

Use the builder to assemble a directive from checkboxes — the tool keeps the syntax legal and concatenates the parts with the comma separator Google expects. Each option carries a one-line plain-English explanation of what it actually does, so you don't ship a directive you don't understand.

Use the parser to paste a meta tag you found in the wild and see what it means. The parser is permissive: it accepts whitespace variations and is case-insensitive, matching how Google's crawler interprets the tag.