Hide From Site Search
What it helps you do
Keep pages that visitors shouldn't land on from your site's search box out of its results: a landing page for one campaign, an internal resource page, an old page you're keeping for its link.
It's built into the Dirigible theme, so you don't need a search-exclude plugin. It only affects your site's own search. To keep a page out of Google, use No Index in the page's SEO panel (Dirigible SEO).
Hide one page
- Edit the page, post or event.
- In the sidebar's Summary panel, check Hide from site search.
- Save.
In the classic editor, the same checkbox is in the Publish box.
Hide or show several at once
- Quick Edit: hover a row in the list, click Quick Edit, and check or uncheck Hide from site search.
- Bulk actions: tick the rows, then pick Hide from site search or Show in site search from Bulk actions and click Apply.
Hidden items show Not in site search · set by you in the list's Status column. Click Hidden above the list to see them, along with everything else kept out of search.
Pages hidden automatically
The theme already keeps its utility pages (the 404 page, form thank-you pages and WordPress's sample content) out of Google. They now stay out of your site's search too. Their Status column chip says why, for example Not in site search · Thank-you page.
Things to know
- Changes show after the cache clears. Search result pages your host has already cached keep their old results until the cache refreshes; purge the site cache to see the change straight away.
- Hidden pages still load for anyone with the link, and they stay in menus, blocks and archives. Only search results leave them out.
- You can still find them in wp-admin. Searches in wp-admin and the editor's link search include hidden pages.
- Sites that used the Search Exclude plugin switched over on their own. The theme kept every page that plugin hid and deactivated it. About a week later the theme deletes the plugin. To undo the switch within that week, reactivate Search Exclude under Plugins: while it's active, it's in charge again, and the theme never deletes it.
- Undoing the switch brings back the plugin's old list. Pages you hid or showed in the theme after the switch aren't in it, so check them in Search Exclude's settings.
- Installing Search Exclude again later (after the theme deleted it) doesn't undo anything: the new copy starts empty, so the theme switches it off again and keeps your hidden pages.
- Going back to an older Dirigible version after the switch lets hidden pages back into search, until Search Exclude is active again.
- A site whose Search Exclude setup hides whole categories, tags or authors keeps the plugin. The theme only hides single items, so it leaves the plugin running there.