Robots Meta Tag Generator
Build a robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header that controls indexing, link following, snippets and image previews for a page.
Directives
Meta tag
HTTP header version
What the robots meta tag does
The robots meta tag tells search engines what they may do with a single page: whether to show it in results, whether to follow its links, and how much of it to show in a snippet. It sits in the page's <head> and is read every time the page is crawled.
Pick your directives on the left and the generator builds the tag, plus the matching X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. Use the header for files that have no <head>, such as PDFs and images.
The directives in plain terms
- noindex keeps the page out of search results.
- nofollow asks crawlers not to follow any link on the page.
- noarchive asks search engines not to offer a cached copy.
- nosnippet stops text snippets and blocks the page from being quoted in AI answers built from snippets.
- max-snippet limits the snippet to a number of characters.
- max-image-preview sets the largest image preview allowed. Large previews are recommended for Google Discover.
- max-video-preview limits video previews to a number of seconds.
A common mistake
Do not block a page in robots.txt and add noindex at the same time. If crawlers cannot fetch the page, they never see the noindex tag, and the URL can still appear in results.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I paste the tag?
Inside the <head> of the page. In WordPress, SEO plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math set these options per page, so you rarely need to edit the theme.
Do I need a robots meta tag on every page?
No. Without one, search engines assume index, follow. Add the tag only where you want different behaviour, or to allow large image previews.
Can I target only Google?
Yes. Use name="googlebot" instead of name="robots". Other crawlers will then ignore the tag.