Does noindex prevent crawling?

No. Noindex prevents indexation but not crawling. Google still crawls the page to read the noindex directive. If you want to prevent crawling, use robots.txt — but then Google cannot see the noindex tag either.

Should I use noindex on out-of-stock product pages?

Generally no. An out-of-stock product may come back in stock, and its page has accumulated PageRank and backlinks. Leave it indexed with an "out-of-stock" message and Product schema with availability="OutOfStock". Only noindex permanently discontinued products.

What pages should be noindex in e-commerce?

Filter URLs (?color=red), pagination, account pages, cart, checkout, thank-you pages, admin/preview pages, thin content pages with fewer than 100 words. Never noindex: products, categories, homepage, blog posts.

Noindex and nofollow: when and how to use them

Noindex and nofollow are meta robots directives that control Google's behavior on your pages and links. They are implemented via the meta robots tag or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.

Syntax

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />

<!-- On a specific link: -->
<a href="..." rel="nofollow">Text</a>

Decision tree: index or noindex?

Always index

Product pages, category pages, homepage, blog posts, brand pages, FAQ pages. These pages represent your commercial and editorial value — they must be visible on Google.

Always noindex

Cart, checkout, account, order confirmation, search results, login, admin pages, preview pages. These pages have no SEO value and dilute the crawl budget.

Case by case

Filter URLs, pagination, out-of-stock products, thin content pages. Use canonical for filters, evaluate case by case for low-content pages.

Directive	Effect on indexation	Effect on links	Use case
index, follow	Indexed	Links followed	All important pages
noindex, follow	Not indexed	Links followed	Internal pages (account, cart)
noindex, nofollow	Not indexed	Links not followed	Admin, preview, test pages
index, nofollow	Indexed	Links not followed	Sponsored content pages

Do not use robots.txt to block pages you want to noindex. A robots.txt block prevents crawling — Google then cannot read your noindex directive and may still index the page via external links. For noindex, always use the meta robots tag.

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FAQ

Noindex tells Google not to index the page (it will not appear in search results). Nofollow tells Google not to follow the links on the page (or a specific link), without affecting the indexation of the page itself.

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Noindex and nofollow: when to use them (and when not)