Meta Robots Generator
Tick the directives you need: the tool outputs the meta robots tag, the X-Robots-Tag header and the matching Apache and Nginx snippets.
Privacy and cost
This tool runs in your browser. What you type or paste is not sent to our servers and it costs nothing to use.
How it works
- Choose the crawler (all, Googlebot, Googlebot-News or Bingbot) then index/noindex and follow/nofollow.
- Add noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex, max-snippet, max-image-preview, max-video-preview or an unavailable_after date if needed.
- Copy the tag into the page <head>, or the HTTP header for a PDF, an image or any non-HTML response.
Example
"noindex" + "follow" + max-image-preview "large" gives <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, max-image-preview:large"> and the header X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow, max-image-preview:large. The tool reminds you not to block the page in robots.txt, or the noindex will never be read.
What the result means
These directives control indexing and how a page appears in results, not crawling. When several directives apply to a page, Google follows the most restrictive one. A directive the crawler cannot read (page blocked by robots.txt) has no effect.
Common problems this tool helps with
- Putting noindex on a page that is also blocked by robots.txt: the crawler never loads it, so it never sees the directive.
- Mixing index and noindex, or nosnippet and max-snippet, without knowing which one wins.
- Trying to deindex a PDF or an image, which have no <head>: you need the X-Robots-Tag header.
- Forgetting that a past unavailable_after date removes the page from results.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between meta robots and X-Robots-Tag?
The directives are the same. The meta tag lives in the HTML; the X-Robots-Tag header is set on the server and also works for non-HTML files.
Do I need "index, follow"?
No, it is the default behaviour. Add it only to be explicit or to combine it with other directives.
What does max-snippet:-1 do?
It allows a text snippet of unlimited length. The value 0 removes the snippet, like nosnippet. Google documents these values.
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