Sometimes your content goals require specific pages to remain hidden from the masses. While it is easy to exclude a page/post from being indexed by search engines (setting it to no-index in your SEO plugin options), hiding a page from your native site search results is a bit trickier.
Hiding a page from WordPress search results is a simple process that can be accomplished with a few clicks. In this guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of hiding a page from WordPress search results.
No need for adding code to your functions.php file or other complicated tasks.
Why You Might Want to Hide a Page from Search Results
- You have a page that’s still a work in progress and you don’t want it to show up in search results until it’s ready to be published.
- You have a page with sensitive information that you don’t want to be publicly accessible.
- You have a page that’s not relevant to your audience, but you still want to keep it on your website for reference purposes.
There isn’t a ready solution for that in WordPress (yet). But thanks to the developers who create free WordPress plugins, there is a simple way to hide specific pages from being found through site search.
Search Exclude Plugin
This plugin does exactly what it’s supposed to do. You’ll see a checkbox on your page/post settings panel (this also works with the Gutenberg editor).
Steps to Hide a Page:
- Install and activate the Search Exclude plugin.
- Go to the edit screen of the page you want to hide from search results.
- Scroll down to the “Search Exclude” section.
- Check the box labeled “Exclude from search results”.
- Save your changes.
Simple and effective! Your page should now be hidden from search results.
With this guide, you should have no trouble keeping your private pages away from public search results.
Summary:
- Install and activate the Search Exclude plugin.
- Go to the edit screen of the page you want to hide from search results.
- Scroll down to the “Search Exclude” section.
- Check the box labeled “Exclude from search results”.
- Save your changes.
Simple and effective! Your page should now be hidden from search results.
With this guide, you should have no trouble keeping your private pages away from public search results.
