data-nosnippet: definition and how it works

data-nosnippet is an attribute you add to an HTML element to keep that element's text out of search snippets and AI-generated summaries. The rest of the page displays normally.

It is the section-level version of the page-wide nosnippet directive. It sits alongside max-snippet, which caps snippet length rather than excluding a block.

This entry is a tight definition. For depth on how the controls behave across engines, read the guide to nosnippet and data-nosnippet in AI answers.

You place the attribute on the element that wraps the text you want hidden:

<p>Plans start at $49 a month.</p>
<div data-nosnippet>Text that should not appear in snippets.</div>

Google's robots meta tag specification documents data-nosnippet with the other snippet controls and lists which elements accept it. Bing added support on October 15, 2025. Bing states that content marked this way "is still indexed normally, but it will be excluded from snippets and AI summaries," and that it remains "available for ranking." The digest of Bing's announcement covers the details.

So the attribute governs display, not indexing. An engine still crawls and stores the text. It just won't show it.

Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Snippet controls, data-nosnippet included, are the documented on-page levers for limiting what those features display. As of October 2026, Google and Bing are the engines that document this attribute.

That makes it useful when you want a block kept out of summaries, such as legal boilerplate or a consent notice.

It also makes it a quiet failure point. A developer may add the attribute to a shared wrapper to hide a cookie banner. If that wrapper also holds your pricing or product description, those facts drop out of AI summaries on every page using the template. Nothing in a dashboard flags it.

The next move is simple: search your rendered HTML for data-nosnippet and confirm each instance is intentional. The snippet controls site audit walks through doing this across a whole site.

• "It removes the section from the index." It does not. Bing says the content is indexed normally and still counts for ranking. Use noindex if you need a page out of the index. The noindex vs nosnippet vs data-nosnippet comparison sets out the differences.
• "Hiding text will hurt my rankings." Bing states the tagged content stays available for ranking. See whether hiding text from AI summaries hurts rankings.
• "There must be an opposite attribute to get a section quoted." There isn't. No markup has credible evidence of making content more likely to be used in an AI answer. The controls that hold up only remove blocks.
• "It stops every AI system." It is documented by Google and Bing. Other engines do not document honoring it, so treat its effect elsewhere as unconfirmed.

• nosnippet: the page-level directive that blocks all snippets.
• max-snippet: limits snippet length, with max-snippet:0 acting like nosnippet.
• Index eligibility: whether a page can be indexed and shown at all, the gate that comes before any snippet control.
• noindex: removes the whole page from the index, not just from display.