How this works
A single tag in the page's code can tell every assistant to leave it out, and nothing on the page itself looks any different.
Two tags do this, and they do different things:
noindex: keep this page out of results entirely. The page can be crawled, but it won't be stored or shown.nosnippet: the page may appear, but no text from it may be quoted. For an assistant that answers in sentences rather than links, that's close to invisible.
There's also max-snippet, which limits how much text may be quoted rather than forbidding it. Google documents all of them.
Why it matters
These tags exist for good reasons: a thank-you page, a members-only area, a duplicate print version. The problem is that they're applied in bulk far more often than anyone intends.
The classic case: a site is built behind a "discourage search engines" switch so the unfinished version doesn't show up anywhere, the site launches, and nobody turns the switch off. Months later the business wonders why it never comes up in AI answers. Everything else on the site is fine.
How to fix
1. Look at the page's source. Open the page in your browser, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on a Mac) to view the source, and search for noindex or nosnippet. If you find either in a <meta name="robots"> tag, that page is being held back.
2. Find out where it came from. It's almost never typed by hand. Usually it's one of three things: a site-wide "discourage search engines" switch left on after launch, a per-page toggle in your SEO settings, or a rule applied to a whole content type (all products, all blog posts) rather than to one page.
3. Remove it only where you mean to. Keep noindex on pages that genuinely shouldn't be found. Remove it everywhere you want to be cited, then publish and reload the page to confirm the tag is gone.
Where to change this on your platform
WordPress
there's a site-wide reading setting that blocks the whole site; check it first. Per-page and per-content-type control lives in your SEO plugin: Yoast SEO site features.
Shopify
Wix
preventing search engines from indexing your page, plus a site-wide switch under managing search engine indexing.
Squarespace
If you can't find the setting
If the tag is in the page source but no setting in your admin seems to produce it, it's coming from the theme or from a plugin. Search your theme files for noindex, or disable SEO-related plugins one at a time and reload the page.
