# Using the robots meta tag > [!IMPORTANT] > It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore). Tuesday, March 06, 2007 Recently, Danny Sullivan brought up good questions about how [search engines handle `meta` tags](https://searchengineland.com/070228-140603.php). Here are some answers about how we handle these tags at Google. ## Multiple content values We recommend that you place all content values in one `meta` tag. This keeps the `meta` tags easy to read and reduces the chance for conflicts. For instance: ``` ``` If the page contains multiple `meta` tags of the same type, we will aggregate the content values. For instance, we will interpret ``` ``` the same way as: ``` ``` If content values conflict, we will use the most restrictive. So, if the page has these `meta` tags: ``` ``` We will obey the `noindex` value. ## Unnecessary content values By default, Googlebot will index a page and follow links to it. So there's no need to tag pages with content values of `index` or `follow`. ## Directing a robots `meta` tag specifically at Googlebot To provide instruction for all search engines, set the meta name to `robots`. To provide instruction for only Googlebot, set the meta name to `Googlebot`. If you want to provide different instructions for different search engines (for instance, if you want one search engine to index a page, but not another), it's best to use a specific `meta` tag for each search engine rather than use a generic robots `meta` tag combined with a specific one. You can find a [list of bots](https://www.robotstxt.org/db) at robotstxt.org. ## Casing and spacing Googlebot understands any combination of lowercase and uppercase. So each of these `meta` tags is interpreted in exactly the same way: ``` ``` If you have multiple content values, you must place a comma between them, but it doesn't matter if you also include spaces. So the following `meta` tags are interpreted the same way: ``` ``` ## If you use both a robots.txt file and robots `meta` tags If the robots.txt and `meta` tag instructions for a page conflict, Googlebot follows the most restrictive. More specifically: - If you block a page with robots.txt, Googlebot will never crawl the page and will never read any `meta` tags on the page. - If you allow a page with robots.txt but block it from being indexed using a `meta` tag, Googlebot will access the page, read the `meta` tag, and subsequently not index it. ## Valid meta robots content values Googlebot interprets the following robots `meta` tag values: - `noindex`: prevents the page from being included in the index. - `nofollow`: prevents Googlebot from following any links on the page. (Note that this is different from the link-level `nofollow` attribute, which prevents Googlebot from following an individual link.) - `noarchive`: prevents a cached copy of this page from being available in the search results. - `nosnippet`: prevents a description from appearing below the page in the search results, as well as prevents caching of the page. - `noodp`: blocks the [Open Directory Project](https://www.dmoz.org/) description of the page from being used in the description that appears below the page in the search results. - `none`: equivalent to `noindex, nofollow`. ## A word about content value `none` As defined by [robotstxt.org](https://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user), the following direction means `noindex, nofollow`. ``` ``` However, some webmasters use this tag to indicate no robots restrictions and inadvertently block all search engines from their content. > [!NOTE] > **Update:** For more information, please see our [robots `meta` tag documentation](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots-meta-tag).