8.9% of Top Websites Use data-nosnippet to Hide Parts of a Page From Snippets and AI Overviews, and 1 in 12 Put It Where Google Ignores It

Summary

Picture an accountant's site that shows a cookie banner and a promo bar on every page. When Google quotes the site in an AI Overview, the quote starts with the cookie text. The fix is a small HTML attribute that tells Google to skip those parts.

That attribute is data-nosnippet. Placed on a span, div or section element, it keeps the text inside out of Google's search snippets. Google's AI features documentation (developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the controls that limit what appears from a page in Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. Unlike nosnippet, it works on part of a page instead of the whole page.

It is far more common than we expected: 68,656 popular homepages (8.9%) use it. Much of that appears to come from platforms and site templates that add it automatically, and about 1 in 12 users place it on elements where it has no effect.

What we measured

We used the HTTP Archive October 2026 mobile crawl (httparchive.crawl.pages) for top-1M homepages. HTTP Archive's markup metric counts data-nosnippet attributes on supported elements (valid) and on other element types (wrong_tag_type).

A site counts as using data-nosnippet when either count is above zero. HTTP Archive does not record which text is wrapped, so we cannot say what content is being hidden. Platform comes from HTTP Archive's technology detection.

Popular sites use it about twice as often as the long tail

Counts by popularity rank.

Adoption peaks among sites ranked 1K to 5K and falls steadily after that, to about half the rate in the long tail. Larger sites may be more likely to have SEO teams that tune what search engines quote.

Platforms drive much of the adoption

Share of homepages with a valid data-nosnippet element, by detected platform. Platforms are named for adoption only.

When nearly every site on a platform has the attribute, it most likely comes from the platform's own templates. Owners on those platforms may not know which parts of their pages are hidden.

1 in 12 users put it where it does nothing

Valid vs unsupported placements across all 68,656 sites using the attribute.

Placing the attribute on a paragraph, list or link, for example, has no effect. Google's documentation names span, div and section, so wrapping the text in a div is usually the fix.

What this means

View your page source and search for data-nosnippet. If your platform adds it, check what it wraps. If it hides your main service description or prices you want quoted, AI Overviews will skip them. If you add it yourself, use it for boilerplate like cookie notices, and put it on a div, span or section. An AI SEO agency can review this tag across a whole site in one pass.

Used well, data-nosnippet lets you shape what AI answers quote without hiding the whole page. Hidden content you want quoted is an easy thing to miss in SEO for AI Overviews, so a free AI visibility audit flags any data-nosnippet tags wrapped around it.

Limits

HTTP Archive counts elements; it does not record which text is wrapped.

We checked homepages only. Inner pages may differ.

Valid means the attribute sits on a supported element type, not that the hidden content was a good choice.

Single crawl, October 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Related studies

• Snippet controls that also govern AI Overviews99.5% of Sites That Set max-snippet Choose No Limit
• Snippet controls that also govern AI OverviewsGoogle-Extended Blockers: 99.9% Still Allow Snippets
• Snippet controls that also govern AI OverviewsOnly 0.16% of Top Sites Use nosnippet