What is Robots Meta?

Introduction

Robots Meta is a piece of code that google to crawl or index the web page content in the search engine. Whereas Robots.txt suggest bots crawl website page precisely like that, Robots meta provide information on how to crawl the content of your website on google. And it will tell the search engine to avoid certain pages that are not necessary and should not be indexed.

In this article, we will see how robots meta help you to crawl your content on google. What are the types, and how do you use them for SEO? Keep on reading to know more about robots meta.

Types of Robots Meta?

There are two types of Robots meta: The meta robots tag and the x robot tag. Both of them have the same parameters. So if bots find these derivatives, it gives strong suggestions to the crawler for indexation. The only difference is how these parameters communicate with the crawler.

Meta Robots Tag

It is commonly known as “robots tag” or even “meta robots.” It is a part of web page HTML code and appears as a code element inside the website page in the head section.

This is how the code is written:

Instead of robots, you can change it to a specific derivative if you want to add only one, and you can also use multiple derivates as long as they are targeting the same robot. Then, separate them with commas and add.

It uses parameters like no index, follow, snippets, or image index. So the tag will not index any images or other things on the page except content. What happens here when you use their parameters? It will not create conflict between meta robots and robots.txt. It sets rules for search engines.

X Robot Tag

While meta robots tell you to control the indexing of certain factors on the page, the x robot tag controls the whole page indexing, and all the specific elements like it does.

You can control the same indexing with both meta robots and x robots, but the X robot will provide more flexibility and functionality.

To use the x robot tag, you should have access to the server access file, php or even htaccess file.

Here are a few points to keep in mind while using the x robot tag:

• • Control the page’s indexation if you don’t have access to the page’s HTML (specifically the head section like the meta robots tag).
  • Don’t block the whole page when it is not needed. For example, block only a few elements like images, videos, unnecessary pages, etc.
  • Add the rules on whether the page should be indexed or not.

Types of Parameters

There are basically 11 types of Parameters in Robots Meta Tag:

All: It is the shortcut for index and follow.

Index: This is the shortcut for crawlers will index the page

Follow: It means the crawler should follow all the links

No follow: The crawler should not follow links or pass equity to linked pages.

No Index: Crawler should not index the page.

None: It is the shortcut for no index, no follow.

No Image Index: Crawlers should not index any images on the page.

No snippet: It means the search engine should not show a snippet of the page in the search results.

Max snippet: Sets the maximum number of snippets for search results.

No cache: The search engine should not show cached links for the page if it appears in search results.

Unavailable after: The search engine should not index the page after the set date.

Conclusion

Robots Meta is essential for your website to crawl on google. With the help of it, you have better control over search engines on what to crawl on google so that unnecessary elements of your website page can be avoided. It ultimately helps you to index only the valuable pages on your website.

And also, the unimportant pages, like the admin page, do not have to do anything for the users, so you can avoid it with the help of it so that it should not get indexed on search engines.