Data study · Snippet controls that also govern AI Overviews
Just 0.16% of Top Websites Use nosnippet, the Setting That Also Limits What Google Shows in AI Overviews
1,206 of 772,412 top homepages carry nosnippet in a robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header. 44.1% of them also say noindex, so only 674 indexable homepages use it to opt out of snippets.
Analysis of 772,412 top-1M homepages · HTTP Archive, October 2026 crawl
Key findings
- 1
1,206 of 772,412 top-1M homepages (0.16%) use nosnippet in a robots or googlebot meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header.
- 2
532 of those (44.1%) pair it with noindex, which already keeps the page out of results; 674 indexable homepages (0.087%) use nosnippet while staying indexable.
- 3
933 sites set nosnippet in a meta tag and 371 in a header; 98 use both.
- 4
Only 2 of the top 1,000 homepages use nosnippet, and no rank bucket goes above 0.27%.
- 5
Google's AI features documentation lists nosnippet among the controls that limit what appears from a page in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Summary
Picture a law firm's marketing manager who notices the firm never shows up in Google's AI Overviews, even for questions its blog answers well. Weeks later a developer finds the culprit: a nosnippet tag left over from an old site template.
nosnippet tells Google not to show a text snippet for a page. 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. So a page with nosnippet can still rank, but Google will not quote it in those answers.
Few popular sites use it. 1,206 of the top 1 million homepages carry nosnippet, 0.16%. Almost half of those also set noindex, which suggests a blanket "hide this page" setting rather than a targeted choice.
What we measured
We used the HTTP Archive October 2026 mobile crawl (httparchive.crawl.pages) for top-1M homepages. We read robots and googlebot meta tags from the almanac meta-nodes metric and X-Robots-Tag values from the main document response, and flagged any that contain nosnippet. Header values aimed only at other bots, such as bingbot, are excluded.
We also flagged noindex or none in the same meta tags to separate pages that are hidden entirely from pages that stay indexed but block snippets. Image preview settings are not part of this study.
nosnippet is rare at every level of popularity
Counts by popularity rank, with the share that also sets noindex.
| Rank bucket | Homepages | Use nosnippet | % of homepages | Also noindex | Indexable with nosnippet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 1K | 738 | 2 | 0.27 | 0 | 2 |
| 1K-5K | 2,920 | 1 | 0.03 | 0 | 1 |
| 5K-10K | 3,586 | 4 | 0.11 | 0 | 4 |
| 10K-50K | 28,831 | 25 | 0.09 | 8 | 17 |
| 50K-100K | 36,937 | 62 | 0.17 | 15 | 47 |
| 100K-500K | 306,048 | 474 | 0.15 | 187 | 287 |
| 500K-1M | 393,352 | 638 | 0.16 | 322 | 316 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 772,412 top-1M homepages · HTTP Archive, October 2026 crawl
Counts are tiny everywhere. The top 1,000 has 2 sites, and every bucket stays at or below 0.27%. Below rank 10,000, between a quarter and a half of nosnippet homepages are also noindex.
Almost half are pages that hide everything anyway
How nosnippet is delivered and combined.
Sites
| Setup | Sites |
|---|---|
| Meta tag only | 835 |
| Header only | 273 |
| Both meta tag and header | 98 |
| With noindex | 532 |
| Without noindex | 674 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 772,412 top-1M homepages · HTTP Archive, October 2026 crawl
A homepage with noindex and nosnippet is often a staging site, a parked domain or a private portal. The 674 indexable homepages with nosnippet are the ones choosing to stay in search without being quoted.
Which platforms these sites run on
Platforms with at least 3,500 homepages in the sample, named for adoption only.
| Platform | Homepages | Use nosnippet | % of homepages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Experience Manager | 4,449 | 16 | 0.36 |
| Next.js | 36,899 | 62 | 0.17 |
| Drupal | 11,424 | 19 | 0.17 |
| Joomla | 3,557 | 6 | 0.17 |
| Magento | 7,460 | 8 | 0.11 |
| WordPress | 107,057 | 62 | 0.06 |
| Shopify | 46,231 | 8 | 0.02 |
| Other or none detected | 496,664 | 1,004 | 0.2 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 772,412 top-1M homepages · HTTP Archive, October 2026 crawl
No platform reaches even half a percent. When nosnippet appears, it is a site-level choice or a leftover setting rather than a platform default.
What this means
Check your homepage and key service pages for nosnippet in the page source and in the response headers. If you find it and want to appear in AI Overviews, remove it. If you only want to hide one part of a page, such as pricing, data-nosnippet on that section is the more precise tool.
If you do want to stay out of AI answers, nosnippet is one of the controls Google documents for that. Weigh it carefully, because it also removes your normal search snippet. Before you add it, get a free AI visibility audit, because nosnippet undoes most of the gains AI Overviews SEO is meant to deliver.
Limits
We checked homepages only. Many sites apply nosnippet to specific inner pages.
Meta tags are read from the raw page data HTTP Archive recorded; tags added later by JavaScript may be missed.
We excluded header values aimed only at other bots. Values aimed at all bots or googlebot are included.
Single crawl, October 2026.
Embed this research
Add the charts from this study to your page. The embed links back here.
<iframe src="https://aisearchoptimization.net/embed/data-studies/nosnippet-adoption-ai-overviews" title="Only 0.16% of Top Sites Use nosnippet" width="100%" height="720" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
Cite this study
APA
Grenyo, K. (2026). Only 0.16% of Top Sites Use nosnippet. AI Search Optimization. https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/nosnippet-adoption-ai-overviews
Plain link
Only 0.16% of Top Sites Use nosnippet - AI Search Optimization - https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/nosnippet-adoption-ai-overviews
Frequently asked questions
Does nosnippet keep a page out of AI Overviews?
Google's AI features documentation lists nosnippet as one of the controls that limit what appears from a page in Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.
How many websites use nosnippet?
1,206 of 772,412 top-1M homepages (0.16%) in October 2026, and 532 of them also use noindex.
Is nosnippet set in meta tags or headers?
Mostly meta tags. 933 sites use a meta tag, 371 use an X-Robots-Tag header and 98 use both.
How do I hide only part of a page from AI Overviews?
Wrap that section in an element with the data-nosnippet attribute, on a span, div or section element. The rest of the page stays quotable.
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