A new robots tag known as indexifembedded allows websites to offer Google more control over which content to index in search returns.
With this element, you may instruct Google to only index content on a web page if it is embedded by iframes and associated HTML tags.
The indexifembedded tag takes precedence over the noindex tag.
That is, use noindex to keep an entire URL out of search results, and use the indexifembedded tag to make a specific piece of content indexable when it’s embedded on another webpage.
According to Google, this tag was intended to address a problem impacting media publishers.
When Should You Use The Indexifembedded Tag?
This new robots tag does not apply to many publications since it is intended for content that has a distinct URL for embedding functionality.
For example, a podcast writer may have web pages dedicated to each podcast episode, each with its own URL.
Then there are URLs linking to the media that other websites may utilize to embed the podcast on one of their pages.
Such a URL is likely to be used when referencing a podcast episode, as I recently did in an article on Googlebot crawling.
The podcast author may not require the media URLs mentioned in search results. Previously, the only way to keep them out of Google Search was to use a noindex tag.
However, the noindex tag prevents the information from being included in various pages during indexing. As a result, if the author wanted to allow embedding, they had to include the media URL as well.
Publishers now have more control over what is listed thanks to the indexifembedded tag.
The indexifembedded tag can be used in conjunction with the noindex element, and it can override it when the noindex URL is embedded in another web page through an iframe or equivalent HTML tag.
What Is The Indexifembedded Tag And How Do I Use It?
There are two ways to utilize this new robots tag.
To allow your content to be listed only when it is embedded on other pages, use the indexifembedded element in conjunction with the noindex tag.
See the sample below for an example of how the code may look:
<meta name= “googlebot” value= “noindex” />
<meta name= “googlebot” value= “indexifembedded” />
<!—OR –>
<meta name= “googlebot” value= “noindex, indexifembedded” />
Alternatively, you may supply the tag in the HTTP header.
Check out the sample below for an example of how that may appear.
X-Robots-Tag: googlebot :noindex
X-Robots-Tag: googlebot :indexifembedded
…
OR
…
X-Robots-Tag: googlebot :noindex, indexifembedded
