The term “X-robots” refers to a directive used in HTTP headers or meta tags within the HTML of a webpage to control how search engines crawl and index content. These directives provide instructions to web-crawling robots, such as those used by Google, Bing, and other search engines, about what they should do with the webpage content. Common values for the X-Robots-Tag include “noindex”, which tells search engines not to include the page in their search results, and “nofollow”, which instructs search engines not to follow links on the page. Other directives can be used to control indexing of images, snippets, and archives. By using the X-robots directive, website owners can manage the visibility of their content in search engines, protect private or sensitive content from appearing in search results, and influence the way their content is presented and linked to across the internet. This is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) as it allows for granular control over how search engines interact with a website at the level of individual pages or types of content.
