en
/login
Koval SEO

Snippet controls that may be unintentional

In the reportSnippet suppression review

accidental_snippet_suppression · Review item

Short answer

This appears when an indexable page asks search engines to show no text snippet, with nosnippet or max-snippet:0, or marks parts of itself with data-nosnippet. These controls are often intentional, so the check does not assume they are wrong. Confirm each one, and remove only those that hide text you want shown.

Severity: Medium. Review it soon when the whole page is restricted, because its result may show no text snippet. It is Low when only parts of the page are marked with data-nosnippet.

Why it matters

A snippet is the text under a result that helps people decide whether to open it. nosnippet asks Google to show no text snippet for the page, max-snippet:0 means the same, and data-nosnippet on a span, div or section keeps the marked text out of snippets, so a control added by mistake takes that text away. The check also reports data-nosnippet on other elements, where Google does not document the same effect.

What to do

  1. Look at the evidence in the finding: the directive it found, with the page's head where it was captured or the X-Robots-Tag header, or a count of data-nosnippet elements with up to five short samples.
  2. If the restriction is not wanted, remove that directive or attribute in your website editor, SEO plugin or server settings; a header change usually needs your developer or host.
  3. Keep the restrictions you chose on purpose, for example on text you do not want quoted in results.

When to leave it as it is: if you restrict snippets on purpose, for legal, privacy or presentation reasons, leave the control as it is. The finding asks you to confirm the choice; it does not claim the control is a mistake.

What we read

We read each indexable page's robots and googlebot meta tags, its X-Robots-Tag response header and its HTML, without running JavaScript. The page is reported when a meta tag or the header contains nosnippet or max-snippet:0, or when any element outside <noscript> and <template> carries a data-nosnippet attribute.

Directives in the header are read when they apply to all crawlers or follow googlebot:, and a directive prefixed with another crawler's name is ignored. In one X-Robots-Tag field such as bingbot: noarchive, nosnippet, both directives stay scoped to Bingbot; separate physical header fields are read independently. A limit other than 0, such as max-snippet:50, is not reported, and pages marked noindex or pointing to another page as canonical are left to other checks.

Example & evidence

Illustrative example — one page, not a live audit.

Address: https://bakery.example/catering/

The response headers we read:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
X-Robots-Tag: max-snippet:0

max-snippet:0 asks for no text snippet for the whole page, so the finding is Medium and shows this header. If the page instead only marked a notice like this one, the finding would be Low and would quote the marked text:

<div data-nosnippet>Prices valid until 30 June</div>

If the restriction was not intended, remove the header. Once no snippet control this check flags remains on the page, it no longer meets the condition.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: view the page source and search for nosnippet and max-snippet, then look for X-Robots-Tag in the response headers, for example in your browser's developer tools.

Check again: Full audit — run a new audit of the site. The finding closes when the page is read again as a complete HTML page and no snippet control this check flags remains. A page that is now only a frame for scripts, carries noindex or points its canonical elsewhere cannot be confirmed.

Limits & sources

The check cannot tell whether a control is intentional. Google documents data-nosnippet on span, div and section elements, while the check counts the attribute on any element, and directives separated only by spaces inside one meta tag are not read.

Confidence: High because the controls are read directly from the page and its headers; what stays uncertain is the intent, which only you can confirm.

Sources

Editorial review: 29 September 2026