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nosnippet and noindex blocking AI Overviews: how to fix it

A noindex, nosnippet or max-snippet:0 directive stops Google and other engines from listing or quoting your page. Google says nosnippet and max-snippet also limit what AI Overviews and AI Mode use. Remove the directive from the meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag header on pages you want found. Recrawling can take days.

By SeenLens · Last updated

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What this check tests

SeenLens reads the value of <meta name="robots"> in the page HTML and the X-Robots-Tag response header. The check fails when a value contains the word noindex, nosnippet or none, or the text max-snippet:0. It passes when no such directive appears. It does not read googlebot specific meta tags.

The word none is matched anywhere in the value, so max-image-preview:none also trips the check. Remove it, or use max-image-preview:large, if you want the check to pass.

What each directive does in Google Search (Google documentation)
DirectiveEffect
noindexThe page does not appear in search results
nosnippetNo text snippet or video preview, and the content is not used as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode
max-snippet:0Equivalent to nosnippet
max-snippet:-1Google chooses the snippet length, with no limit
noneEquivalent to noindex, nofollow

Google also states that a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that no special markup is needed.

How to confirm the problem

curl
curl -s https://example.com/your-page | grep -i -o '<meta[^>]*name="robots"[^>]*>'
curl -sI https://example.com/your-page | grep -i x-robots-tag

Either command printing a directive from the list above is the cause. The embedded scan shows the value it found.

How to fix it

Remove the directive in the place that adds it. Common sources are an SEO plugin setting, a framework default, a staging setting copied to production, and a server header.

HTML head
<!-- Allowed: no restriction on indexing or snippets -->
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1">
  • Next.js: set robots: { index: true, follow: true } in the metadata export. Next.js adds noindex to pages that return 404, which is correct for those pages (docs updated 2026-08-19 and 2026-10-06).
  • Nginx: remove add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"; from the server or location block.
  • Apache: remove Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" from the configuration or .htaccess.
  • Vercel: remove the X-Robots-Tag entry from the headers array in vercel.json. Keep it on preview hosts you want out of search.
  • WordPress: turn off the search engine visibility option under Settings, Reading on a live site, then check your SEO plugin's page level setting.

Do not block the page in robots.txt to keep it out of results. Google must be able to fetch the page to read the directive.

How to verify the fix

  1. Run both curl commands. Neither should print a blocking directive.
  2. In Google Search Console, run URL Inspection and request indexing for the page.
  3. Wait. Google says preview controls can take several days to several months to take effect after a recrawl.

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When can you ignore it?

Keep the directive on pages you do not want found, such as thank you pages, internal search results and staging sites. Use nosnippet or max-snippet on purpose if you want to limit how much of a page Google shows, knowing it also limits AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Sources