Is my page telling engines not to quote it?
A page can be listed in search and still carry an instruction that says "do not quote me". A nosnippet directive keeps your words out of search snippets and, for Google, out of its AI answers. Bing reads noarchive the same way for Copilot. We check whether your page says it.
What it actually is
Search and answer engines read a few small instructions about quoting, in the robots meta tag or in a response header. nosnippet and max-snippet:0 say "show nothing from this page". noarchive and nocache are Bing's versions, limiting how much Copilot may use. A separate attribute, data-nosnippet, hides one fragment of a page from quotes while leaving the rest.
Why it matters
An answer can only quote what it is allowed to use. Google says a nosnippet page is not used as direct input for its AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Bing says noarchive keeps a page out of Copilot responses. The page still loads, still ranks in a list, still passes every indexing test, and quietly never appears inside an answer. Nothing on the page looks wrong, which is why it goes unnoticed.
What good looks like
Pages you want quoted carry no quoting restriction at all, or an explicit statement that any length is welcome. The restrictions that remain are deliberate and narrow: one fragment wrapped in data-nosnippet, such as a price you do not want repeated, rather than a whole page switched off.
Being honest about it
Some restrictions are a considered choice, for licensed text or content behind a subscription, and we do not pretend otherwise. We still report them, because the question this product asks is whether a machine can use the page, and a page that forbids quoting cannot be used in an answer. A narrow data-nosnippet on a small fragment is routine and does not count against you.
Where most sites go wrong
Most of these are inherited. A news or publishing template adds noarchive to every page years ago and nobody removes it. A plugin offers a "no snippet" switch that is ticked for the whole site. A page-level tag meant for one private page is applied by a template to a whole section.
On the web
In October 2026, 98% of the sites we scanned passed the “Engines are allowed to quote the page” check.
| Result | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Pass | 98% |
| Worth a look | 2% |
| To fix | <1% |
| Couldn't judge | 0% |
Webflow sites pass it most often, at 100%. Next.js sites pass it least often, at 94%.
Not enough history yet.
Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned: ones people chose to scan, plus lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.
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