max-snippet
A robots directive that caps how many characters of a page's text a search engine may show as its snippet, written as max-snippet:N in a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag header. CrawlCheck reads the value on each crawled page and lists very short limits among pages that tell engines to show little of themselves.
What max-snippet does not show
It limits the quoted preview; it does not change what the engine reads or how it ranks the page.
Where max-snippet comes up on this site
- Meta robots vs X-Robots-Tag vs robots.txt: which one controls indexingLayer 2: meta robots and X-Robots-Tag are about the fetched page Both carry the same directives, noindex , nofollow , nosnippet , noimageindex , max-snippet , unavailable_after , and a crawler applies whichever it finds.
- Content-Signal in robots.txt: search, ai-input, ai-trainPage-level directives such as noindex , nosnippet or max-snippet , in a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag header, decide what a search engine may do with a fetched page, and Google applies nosnippet to its AI features as well as classic snippets.
Terms this definition uses
Related terms in Indexing and discovery
Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
nosnippet · max-image-preview · unavailable_after · noimageindex · index coverage · canonical · noindex · X-Robots-Tag · orphan page · E-E-A-T · E-E-A-T proxies · topical authority · Soft 404 · case consistency · accessibility structure · landmark region · accessible name · skip link · main landmark · alt attribute · form control name · duplicate id · IndexNow · faceted navigation · thin content · duplicate content · near-duplicate · boilerplate · MinHash · shingle · dead anchor · placeholder content · image placeholder · alt text · EXIF
Questions about max-snippet
What is max-snippet?
A robots directive that caps how many characters of a page's text a search engine may show as its snippet, written as max-snippet:N in a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag header. CrawlCheck reads the value on each crawled page and lists very short limits among pages that tell engines to show little of themselves.
What does max-snippet not show or guarantee?
It limits the quoted preview; it does not change what the engine reads or how it ranks the page.
Which area of the glossary does max-snippet belong to?
Indexing and discovery: Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
← nosnippet · max-image-preview →
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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