Nosnippet Attribute

Definition

The “nosnippet” attribute is a meta tag used in the HTML code of a webpage to instruct search engines not to show a snippet or preview of the content in search results. When the nosnippet tag is applied to a page, search engines will display only the page’s title, URL, and meta description in the search results.

Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) also not show overviews of content blocked with the nosnippet tag.

Nosnippet Attribute Relevance for SEO

The nosnippet attribute plays a vital role in controlling how your webpage is presented in search results. While it’s generally a goal of SEO to increase visibility and click-through-rates via engaging snippets, there can be strategic reasons to use the nosnippet attribute. For example, if a webpage contains sensitive information, or if the automatic snippets generated do not accurately represent the page content, using nosnippet can prevent potential misunderstandings or issues with user experience. Nosnippet also helps avoid duplicate content issues on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Nosnippet Attribute Best Practices for SEO

• Use selectively: Because using this attribute can reduce click-through rates by lacking context for potential site visitors, it’s best to use this attribute carefully and selectively. Only use it when you’re certain that a snippet would be misleading or inappropriate.
• Combination with other tags: The nosnippet tag can be combined with other tags like ‘noarchive’ or ‘notranslate’ to customize your page’s display in search results.
• Ensure correct implementation: The tag should be placed in the head section of the page’s HTML to ensure search engines can easily locate and understand the instruction.
• For rich results: In case you do not want to show a rich result or a text snippet but still want your webpage to appear in search, you can make use of nosnippet in a more granular and specific way by using max-snippet:[number].