nosnippet
Also called: max-snippet, data-nosnippet, nosnippet directive, nosnippet meta tag
nosnippet is a robots directive that tells Google to show no text snippet or video preview for a page in search results, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. You apply it as a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.
The directive works at the page level. Add <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet"> to the <head>, or send an X-Robots-Tag: nosnippet response header. Once Google recrawls, the page loses its descriptive snippet, and Google stops using that text as direct input for AI features.
nosnippet vs max-snippet vs data-nosnippet
Three related preview controls trade bluntness for precision:
nosnippetremoves the snippet entirely. Google treatsmax-snippet:0as equivalent.max-snippet:[number]caps the snippet at N characters.max-snippet:-1lets Google choose the length, which is the default and what you want on pages you hope to surface in AI Overviews.data-nosnippetis an HTML attribute you place on aspan,div, orsectionto exclude just that block (say, a paywalled paragraph) while the rest of the page stays snippet-eligible.
One caveat: nosnippet is a hammer. Glenn Gabe documented content dropping out of an AI Overview within hours of adding it, but the same page’s normal listing then shows with no description text, which usually hurts click-through. Structured data still functions, so rich results are unaffected. To keep one section out of AI answers without gutting the whole listing, reach for data-nosnippet on that section, not a blanket page-level rule.
How it affects your traffic
nosnippet is a scalpel that is easy to fire like a shotgun. A stray directive in a global template, or a leftover X-Robots-Tag header from staging, can silently strip descriptions off hundreds of URLs and tank click-through even while rankings hold. If the goal is to keep a block out of AI Overviews without hurting normal listings, data-nosnippet on that block is almost always the right call. Auditing preview directives across templates and headers is the kind of crawl-level check our Technical SEO work catches before it costs you clicks.
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