Free browser tool / Googlebot text search
Noarchive, nosnippet, and snippet control: the working guide
The robots meta directives that shape what searchers see, not whether they see you. One table, real head blocks, and the two things these directives are constantly blamed for that they do not do.
Directive table
| Directive | Effect | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| noarchive | No Cached link in results | Pages that change fast or show logged-in state |
| nosnippet | No text snippet, no video preview; thumbnail still possible | Paywall-adjacent pages, legal text |
| max-snippet: N | Snippet capped at N characters; 0 equals nosnippet, -1 is no cap | Calibrated teaser for news or reference |
| max-image-preview: S | none, standard, large, or none-larger | Stop large previews in Discover and cards |
| max-video-preview: N | Animated preview capped at N seconds | Video landing pages |
| unavailable_after: date | Drops from results after the RFC 850 timestamp | Embargoed or expiring announcements |
| notranslate | No Translate prompt in results | Legal or identity documents |
| noimageindex | Images on the page stay out of image search | Licensed photography |
Real head blocks
A news site that allows indexing but limits how much of the story a result can quote:
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:120, max-image-preview:standard">
A page with an embargo: indexable now, gone after a date:
<meta name="robots" content="unavailable_after: 31-Dec-2026 23:59:59 GMT">
Everything off, page stays indexed:
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex">
The same set as a header, for PDFs:
X-Robots-Tag: noarchive, nosnippet
What these directives do not do
- They do not deindex
- noarchive and nosnippet pages stay fully indexed and ranked. Only noindex removes a page.
- They do not stop scraping
- They constrain the search engine's result display. Any bot that fetches the page directly reads everything.
- nosnippet does not hide images
- Image previews need max-image-preview: none. Text and image controls are separate.
- max-snippet: 0 is not subtle
- It is nosnippet. If you want a teaser, write a real number like 120 or 160.
Verification checklist
- Read the live head
- Paste the URL into the meta robots checker and confirm the directive set Google will parse.
- Confirm the header layer
curl -sI URL | grep -i x-robots. A header directive unions with the meta tag, most restrictive wins.- Check the cached copy
- After noarchive, the Cached link disappears at the next recrawl, not before.
- Preview the snippet
- Search for the exact page title; the shown text length reflects max-snippet after recrawl.
Directive definitions: the full robots meta reference. Header equivalent: X-Robots-Tag reference. Indexing control versus crawl control: noindex versus robots.txt.