Snippet Controls (nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet)

Snippet controls are the robots meta tag rules (nosnippet and max-snippet) and the data-nosnippet HTML attribute that limit how much of a page's text Google may show in search results. Google's documentation says they also apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode: nosnippet stops a page being used as a direct input for those features, and max-snippet caps how much of it they can use.

Google's robots meta tag specification defines the controls:

• nosnippet: no text snippet or video preview for the page in any form of result. Google lists web search, Google Images, Discover, AI Overviews and AI Mode, and says the rule also prevents the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• max-snippet:[number]: use at most that many characters as a text snippet. 0 is the same as nosnippet and -1 means no limit. It also limits how much content may be used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode, except where the publisher has granted permission separately, for example through structured data or a license agreement with Google.
• data-nosnippet: an attribute on span, div or section elements that keeps the marked text out of snippets while the rest of the page stays usable. Google advises against adding or removing it with JavaScript, because extraction can happen before or after rendering.

The page-level rules can go in a meta name="robots" tag or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. When rules conflict, the more restrictive one applies, so max-snippet:50 combined with nosnippet means no snippet. All of them depend on crawling: if robots.txt blocks a URL, Google never sees its meta tags.

For Google's AI features these are the main per-page levers. Google's AI features documentation says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the way to limit what is shown from a page. Googlebot rules in robots.txt control crawling, and Google-Extended does not apply to Search at all.

The cost is that snippet controls are not AI-specific. A nosnippet tag that keeps a page out of AI Overviews also removes its text snippet in classic results and its eligibility for featured snippets, which usually lowers click-through. Until mid-2026 there was no way around that trade-off. The Search generative AI control in Search Console, available to all sites since August 31, 2026, lets a site leave all Search generative AI features without touching classic snippets, but it works per property rather than per page. Under the UK Competition and Markets Authority's June 2026 publisher conduct requirement, Google must offer UK publishers page-level controls for grounding its AI search features by March 3, 2027.

Bing handles AI answers differently. It supports nosnippet and data-nosnippet, but its Copilot-specific rules are noarchive, which keeps content out of Copilot answers and Microsoft's model training, and nocache, which limits Copilot to the URL, title and snippet. Bing's webmaster guidelines warn that nosnippet and data-nosnippet may limit Copilot citation quality.

In GEO work, snippet controls are most useful in small doses. A publisher can wrap paywalled paragraphs or price tables in data-nosnippet so AI features cannot reproduce them, while the rest of the page remains quotable and citable. A site-wide nosnippet or max-snippet:0 is usually a mistake, often introduced by a CMS plugin, and shows up as a sudden drop in AI Overview impressions in the Generative AI performance report. After any change, use URL Inspection to confirm what Googlebot sees, and allow days to months for recrawling before judging the effect.