X-Robots-Tag Noindex: 3 in 10 Noindexed Homepages Hide It in a Header

    12,177 homepages in the top 1M sites by Chrome traffic tell Google not to index them, and 30.6% of those (3,722) do it with an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header instead of a meta tag.

    Share of noindexed homepages using the X-Robots-Tag header, by tier
    Top 10K (66)19.7%
    Top 100K (1,103)27.7%
    Top 1M (11,008)30.9%

    Source: PageSpeed Matters. HTTP Archive crawl, Sept 2026, mobile, top 1M sites by Chrome traffic.

    Tiers are separate rank bands (Top 100K means ranks 10K to 100K). The Top 10K group is small and includes the 3 noindexed Top 1K homepages.

    Source: X-Robots-Tag Noindex: 3 in 10 Noindexed Homepages Hide It in a Header - PageSpeed Matters