Noindex
Noindex is an instruction in a page's code telling search engines to leave that page out of their results.
The page still works normally and anyone with the link can visit it.
It's the right setting for thank-you pages, ads landing pages, internal tools and staging sites.
Thank-you pages especially, because a thank-you page appearing in search results means people reaching it without ever filling in the form, which corrupts your conversion count.
The common accident is a noindex left on a whole site after launch, which is why I check it as part of going live.
It's different from blocking a page in robots.txt: noindex asks for the page to be left out of results, while robots.txt asks for it not to be read at all.
Blocking a page in robots.txt can actually prevent the noindex being seen, so the 2 shouldn't be combined on the same page.
What this means for you
A site that disappeared from Google overnight has a noindex left on it more often than anything else, and it's a 5-minute fix once found.
This one sits under Web design.
Related terms
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