noindex
A robots directive, delivered by meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header, that instructs search engines to drop a page from their index.
Crawling IndexingTemporary removals
Removals tool
A Search Console tool that temporarily hides a URL from Google results for about six months while a permanent removal method is put in place.
In full
The tool is a stopgap: it suppresses the result but does not deindex the page. Permanent removal requires a 404/410 status, a noindex directive, or password protection. There is also an 'Outdated content' public tool for refreshing snippets of pages that have already changed or been deleted, and an SafeSearch-related reporting flow. Misusing removals to hide pages you still want indexed later is a common self-inflicted traffic loss.
Example
A company accidentally publishes an unreleased pricing page, requests a temporary removal, then adds noindex and lets Google recrawl.
Related terms
HTTP status codes
Numeric codes in an HTTP response that tell crawlers how to treat a URL: 200 index it, 3xx follow the redirect, 404/410 drop it, 5xx come…
Google Search Console
Google's free property-level reporting and diagnostics service covering search performance, indexing status, enhancements, manual actions…
Indexing
Storing and organising a crawled page in a search engine's index so it becomes eligible to be retrieved and ranked for queries.
URL Inspection tool
A Search Console feature showing Google's indexed state for a URL plus a live test with rendered HTML, screenshot, and page resource…