Free SEO Tool
Meta Robots Tag Generator
Build a robots meta tag from the full set of rules Google actually supports — not just noindex and nofollow, but nosnippet, indexifembedded, max-snippet, max-image-preview, max-video-preview, notranslate, noimageindex and unavailable_after — and get the identical X-Robots-Tag HTTP header alongside it, for the PDFs and images that have no <head> to put a tag in.
How it works, plainly: this is a rule-based generator, not an AI model. Every result is assembled from tested formulas, templates and validators that run entirely in your browser — no model call, no cost, and nothing you type is uploaded.
- Free
- All 12 documented rules
- X-Robots-Tag too
- Flags conflicting rules
How it works
- 01 Tick the rules you want
Indexing rules, snippet limits, preview sizes and an expiry date, each with the exact token Google reads.
- 02 Target one crawler, or all
Leave the crawler blank for name="robots", or name a bot for name="googlebot" and a per-agent X-Robots-Tag.
- 03 Read the conflict warnings
nosnippet beside max-snippet, indexifembedded without noindex, an unparseable date — each is called out with what Google does about it.
- 04 Copy the tag or the header
The meta tag for HTML pages, the header for anything without a <head>: PDFs, images, feeds.
Next step
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- What are all the robots meta tag values Google supports?
- Twelve: all, noindex, nofollow, none, nosnippet, indexifembedded, max-snippet:[number], max-image-preview:[setting], max-video-preview:[number], notranslate, noimageindex and unavailable_after:[date/time]. Rules are case-insensitive and may be combined in one comma-separated list or spread across several meta tags. Any rule valid in a robots meta tag is also valid as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.
- Does noarchive still work?
- No. Google lists noarchive under historical and other unused rules: the noarchive rule is no longer used by Google Search to control whether a cached link is shown in search results, as the cached link feature no longer exists. Two more in the same list are nocache and nositelinkssearchbox. This generator still emits noarchive if you ask for it — other engines may read it — but it tells you Google will not.
- How do I stop my content feeding AI Overviews?
- Use nosnippet or max-snippet. Google documents that nosnippet applies to all forms of search results including AI Overviews and AI Mode, and will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. max-snippet:[number] works the same way as a cap: it limits how much of the content may be used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. For a surgical version, the data-nosnippet HTML attribute excludes individual span, div and section elements rather than the whole page.
- What happens if two rules conflict?
- The more restrictive rule applies. Google's example is a page carrying both max-snippet:50 and nosnippet: the nosnippet rule wins. The same logic runs across tags for different crawlers — a page with <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> and <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"> is treated as noindex, nofollow when Googlebot crawls it, because the search engine uses the sum of the negative rules.
- When should I use X-Robots-Tag instead of the meta tag?
- Whenever the resource has no HTML head to put a tag in — PDFs, images, videos, CSV downloads — and whenever it is easier to set a rule at the server than to edit thousands of templates. The header may optionally name a user agent before the rules, like 'X-Robots-Tag: googlebot: nofollow'; rules given without a user agent are valid for all crawlers, and the header name, the user agent name and the values are all case-insensitive.
- Why is my noindex being ignored?
- Almost always because the URL is blocked in robots.txt. Google's documentation is explicit: if a page is disallowed from crawling through the robots.txt file, then any information about indexing or serving rules will not be found and will therefore be ignored. The crawler never fetches the page, so it never sees the tag. Remove the disallow, let the page be crawled, and the noindex takes effect.