Noindex: A robots directive, in a meta tag or HTTP header, that tells search engines not to show a page in results. The page can still be crawled — a search engine has to fetch it to see the rule.
Where to set it in WordPress
You rarely type the tag yourself. In Yoast SEO, open the post’s Advanced tab and set “Allow search engines to show this content in search results?” to No; whole content types and taxonomies are switched off under Yoast SEO › Settings, as Yoast’s noindex help page shows. Rank Math puts a Robots Meta setting in the post’s Advanced tab (visible in Advanced Mode) and sitewide defaults under Rank Math SEO › Titles & Meta, per its own guide. The “Discourage search engines” box under Settings › Reading applies a noindex to the entire site, which is why it is the first thing to check when a new site never shows up. For PDFs and other files, the same rule can be sent as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, which Google’s robots meta tag documentation covers.
What it doesn’t do
- It doesn’t stop crawling. Google has to fetch the page to see the tag, and its crawl budget guide says it still requests noindexed pages, so noindex doesn’t save crawl budget.
- It doesn’t combine with a robots.txt block. Google says a noindexed page must not be blocked by robots.txt, or the crawler never sees the rule and the URL can still appear in results.
- It isn’t a fix for duplicates you want to consolidate. A canonical tag or a redirect points search engines at the page you keep; noindex just removes a page from results. When two posts compete, the guide on whether to merge, redirect or retarget them helps you pick the fix that keeps the stronger page’s signals.
When it is the right tool
Thank-you pages, internal search results, thin tag archives, a hobby forum’s member profiles: pages readers need but searchers don’t. Keep them out of your sitemap, and check Search Console’s Page indexing report for important pages wrongly flagged as noindexed after a plugin or theme change. Linking to a noindexed page is fine; just don’t make it the main path to pages you do want found. The internal link audit checklist includes a check for exactly that.