GLOSSARY TERM
What is Meta Robots Tag?
Definition
An HTML meta tag in the page head (<meta name="robots" content="...">) that controls indexing and following behavior per page. Common values include noindex, nofollow, noarchive, and nosnippet.
Why it Matters for AI Search
Meta robots is more reliable than robots.txt for keeping pages out of the index — robots.txt only blocks crawling, not indexing of URLs discovered elsewhere. The most common bug is leaving noindex tags on production pages after copying from staging.
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