"nosnippet" - does it work?

Does suppress cache, but not snippet

[rjohara]

Google's help pages say that you can prevent Googlebot from returning a snippet ("ransom note") in its SERPs by using the following on any page:

<meta name="Googlebot" content="nosnippet" />

The help pages say that this also suppresses the cache for that page.

I've experimented with nosnippet on a couple of pages, and it does indeed suppress the cache (which is how I can tell it has kicked in), but the snippet still appears. Has anyone else used this and gotten it to work?

[jdMorgan]

rjohara,

How long did you wait after adding nosnippet? - I'm wondering if it takes a complete spidering/update cycle to kick in, as opposed to a cache "fresh" cycle.

Interesting topic - I'm looking forward to an answer to your question, too.

Jim

[Macguru]

According to google it should be formatted as follows :

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOSNIPPET">
[google.com...]

Yours read like : <meta name="Googlebot" content="nosnippet" />

Could the "/" trashed it?

<added>I just noticed the '#' an page anchor wont work and go to top of page. Maybe the redirect? Click the 'Remove snippets' link to get it.</added>

[Powdork]

What is supposed to happen when nosnippet works? Does Google return the dmoz description or the meta description or do you actually get nosnippet. Google's page does not tell.
Along a simlar line does Google support noimageindex and if so would that mean the Alt text would not be counted. This would be especially important in the case of image links.

[rjohara]

The snippet (correct me if I'm wrong) is the part below beginning "... WebmasterWorld Highlighted" and I assume the nosnippet function should prevent that piece from appearing.

WebmasterWorld News and discussion for the independent web ...... WebmasterWorld Highlighted Posts Sep. 23, 2002. Sep. ... Sep. 10, Selected Content
- The Best of WebmasterWorld Posted in New To Web Development by JamesR. Sep. ...
Description: Professional webmaster and search engine promotion discussions.
Category: Computers > Internet > ... > Authoring > Webmaster Resources > Chats and Forums
www.webmasterworld.com/ - Similar pages

The WebmasterWorld SERP above doesn't show a link to the cache following the "Similar pages" link, but nosnippet is supposed to suppress that also. I did wonder if it might take a full cycle to kick in, but when I added no snippet to a couple pages as a test, the cache link disappeared within a few days, leading me to think the feature was active, but the snippet was still included. Maybe it will disappear with this update, I don't know. I'd be glad to hear of any other experiences with it.

(Also, the /> ending for the element is just the close of an XHTML empty element, so that shouldn't have any effect, at least in theory. I use that for all meta, img, etc., elements, and as far as I know it has never made any difference.)

[pontifex]

@rjohara: I inserted the NOSNIPPET tag in my pages after your post in late September, after the site was spidered. Meanwhile we had a complete spidering on all the 8 pages of the domain and the Snippets are still in there.
Did you have any success with your test last month? For me it looks like the Tag is simply not working right: NOARCHIVE works, but the snippets are still there. Maybe the text of the hyperlinks is still displayed, could that be?

greetz,
pontifex

[Mohamed_E]

> Also, the /> ending for the element is just the close of an XHTML empty element, so that shouldn't have any effect, at least in theory.

Hmmm ...

In a thread [webmasterworld.com] on WebmasterWorld Community Center Brett asks:

> Do any search engines claim they suppor Xhtml in documentation?

Note that Bird, later in the thread, suggests that search engines probably simply ignore the trailing '/'.

[quiet_man]

>>(Also, the /> ending for the element is just the close of an XHTML empty element, so that shouldn't have any effect, at least in theory. I use that for all meta, img, etc., elements, and as far as I know it has never made any difference.) <<

Interesting you say that, because I recently tried the SearchEngineWorld SimSpider on my XHTML pages and it wouldn't pick up any of the metas. When I removed the /> ending, the metas were indexed. (see [webmasterworld.com...] for details).

Pontifex - did you include the closing />?

[Added after submit - oops, Mohamed beat me to it.]

[jdMorgan]

pontifex,

If your nosnippet directive is still in place, I'd expect it to have an effect only after this upcoming update, when Google's index will be updated to use the data spidered at the beginning of October. Let us know if it's still in place and if anything changes!

Thanks,
Jim

[pontifex]

Hi folks,

1.) I did not include the /, just the usual tag, as seen on: [google.com...]

2.) The theory that the NOSNIPPET tag will take effect after the coming (will it ever?) update is the last theory that is left, I keep you posted. Having just 8 pages on that one domain might be a good testbed...

thanks, now everybody says three times "googleman" :-)

pontifex

[pontifex]

Ahhhh!

I looked on www2 now and checked for the NOSNIPPET tag... here is my header and it is NOT(!) working, in the SERP it looks like a standard spidered page...

<title>my removed title</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="my removed keywords">
<meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive, nosnippet">
<meta name="description" content="removed description">
<meta name="language" content="deutsch, de">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow, noarchive">
<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="NOSNIPPET">

hmnpf! double googlebot tag might be the prob?

any more hints appreciated!