Robots meta tag
A `<meta name="robots">` element in the HTML head carrying per-page indexing and serving directives such as noindex, nofollow, nosnippet…
Crawling IndexingSnippet controls
nosnippet / max-snippet
Robots directives controlling whether and how much of a page's text a search engine may show as a snippet or use in generated summaries.
In full
`nosnippet` suppresses text snippets entirely, `max-snippet:[number]` caps snippet length in characters, and `max-snippet:-1` allows any length. Google states these controls also govern the use of content in AI Overviews and AI Mode, making them the practical lever for publishers who want to remain in the index but limit generative reuse. Suppressing snippets typically reduces click-through, so it is a trade-off rather than a free win.
Example
A subscription publisher sets `max-snippet:50` on paywalled articles to limit how much text is exposed in results and AI summaries.
Related terms
data-nosnippet
An HTML attribute that excludes a specific span, div or section of a page from being used in Google's snippets while leaving the rest…
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated summaries shown at the top of many search results, synthesising information from multiple web pages with links to…
Google-Extended
A robots.txt control token that governs whether a site's content can be used to improve Gemini models and grounded Gemini API responses…
Featured snippet
A block at or near the top of Google's results that quotes an extracted answer from a page, with a link to the source.