Which publisher tags control Bing's AI-generated captions?

Definition: A Bing AI-generated caption is a query-specific text snippet built from page content for a Bing search result. Bing says the wording can differ between queries and may not mirror the wording on the page, as described in its caption announcement.

Key facts

• In its November 15, 2023 announcement, Bing says captions may produce different snippets for different queries and may use wording that is absent from the page. See the Bing caption announcement.
• Bing names NOCACHE and NOARCHIVE as tags that prevent captions from being created for a site in that announcement.
• Bing says it respects the MAXSNIPPET and NOSNIPPET meta tags for captions.
• In a Bing announcement dated October 15, 2025, Bing documents data-nosnippet for excluding selected sections from Bing Search snippets and AI-generated answers while the page remains indexed normally.

Which tags control captions for a whole page?

Bing's caption announcement names NOCACHE and NOARCHIVE as page-level controls. Microsoft's September 2023 guidance for Bing Chat documents a distinction between them: a page with NOCACHE may appear with only its URL, title and snippet, while content tagged NOARCHIVE is excluded from Bing Chat answers and their links. When both tags are present, Bing says it treats the content as NOCACHE. Content carrying either tag still appears in Bing search results.

The same guidance shows these two implementation patterns:

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive, nocache">
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">
<meta name="bingbot" content="nocache">

The first pattern combines both values. The second targets bingbot with NOCACHE in addition to the general NOARCHIVE value.

What do MAXSNIPPET and NOSNIPPET control?

Bing's 2020 snippet controls announcement defines max-snippet:[number] as the maximum text length, in characters, of a search-result snippet. Bing states that a value of 0 shows no text snippet and a value of -1 sets no snippet-length limit. The same announcement says NOSNIPPET remains supported, the options can be combined with other robots meta tags, and Bing uses them as directives rather than hints. Bing's 2023 caption announcement specifically lists MAXSNIPPET and NOSNIPPET among the metatags it respects.

For a page-level text-preview limit, the documented form is:

<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:0">
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">

MAXSNIPPET sets a numeric ceiling. NOSNIPPET removes the text snippet under the Bing description above.

Can one section be excluded from a caption?

As of October 15, 2025, Bing documents the data-nosnippet HTML attribute for selected content. Bing says marked content remains indexed normally and remains available for ranking, but is excluded from Bing Search snippets and AI summaries. The attribute can be applied to an HTML element such as a div:

<div data-nosnippet>
  Subscriber Content
</div>

This section-level control has a narrower scope than NOCACHE or NOARCHIVE, which Bing's caption announcement presents as page-level choices. Bing's 2025 documentation gives subscriber-only text, comments, legal boilerplate and promotional content as examples of sections that can be excluded from previews.

Related terms

• Can Bing generate a search snippet with wording absent from the page?
• Copilot Search in Bing
• nosnippet
• max-snippet
• data-nosnippet

FAQ

Is NOCACHE the same as NOARCHIVE?

No. If you use NOCACHE, Bing's September 2023 guidance allows the URL, title and snippet in Bing Chat answers. If you use NOARCHIVE, Bing says the content is excluded from those answers and their links. Both values together are treated as NOCACHE.

What value of MAXSNIPPET removes the text snippet?

Use max-snippet:0. Bing's snippet-controls announcement defines 0 as showing no text snippet and -1 as having no snippet-length limit.

Can you hide one paragraph instead of the whole page?

Yes. Bing documents data-nosnippet on an HTML element for selected sections. The marked content remains indexed normally but is excluded from Bing Search snippets and AI summaries.

Sources

1. Microsoft Bing, "Announcing Bing captions", 15 November 2023
2. Microsoft Bing, "Announcing new options for webmasters to control usage of their content in Bing Chat", 22 September 2023
3. Microsoft Bing, "Announcing new options for webmasters to control their snippets at Bing", 8 April 2020
4. Microsoft Bing, "Bing Introduces Support for the data-nosnippet HTML Attribute", 15 October 2025

---

Check how a page reads to answer engines. Open the GEO score analyzer