Based on a sample size of one page, different search engines have been found to handle the "NOINDEX" meta tag, sometimes differently: Google doesn't show the page in any way Ask doesn't show the page in any way MSN shows a url reference and Cached link, but no snippet. Clicking the cached link doesn't return anything. Yahoo! shows a url reference and Cached link, but no snippet. Clicking on the cached link returns the cached page. However, the question now arises whether Google should completely drop a NOINDEX'ed page from its search results vs. show a reference to the page, or something in between?
The proper way to prevent crawling and indexing of certain pages is to use the robots.txt file, all 4 major search engines follow this standard, this includes Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask.com and many other smaller search engines, also majority of web robots should follow this standard. You can manual remove URLs already in the index with Google Webmasters Central, make sure to apply the proper robot meta tag & robots.txt disallow line to prevent future re-crawling and indexing.
If one is going to NOINDEX a page that means ..the page should not be displayed on the SERPS at all. So why don't all search engine stick with this simple rule.....