Utility Pages Out of Search
What it helps you do
Keep pages that only make sense in context out of Google, so search results show your real content. The Dirigible theme marks these pages "noindex, follow" (search engines skip the page but still follow its links) and leaves them out of the sitemap:
- The 404 page and the custom blog layout page you chose in the Customizer.
- WordPress's Sample Page and "Hello world!" post, while their text is still WordPress's original.
- Gravity Forms thank-you pages: a page a form's confirmation sends visitors to, whose address says thank you or confirmation (for example
/thank-you/or/request-received/), that isn't in a menu and has little text. - Post format archives (such as
/type/image/) when your theme doesn't use post formats.
There's nothing to set up. It works with WordPress's own sitemap and with Yoast's.
What's never affected
- Your home page, your blog page and your posts page.
- Any page in a menu, and any page with more than a short message, even if a form sends visitors there.
- Pages whose address doesn't say thank you or confirmation, such as
/success-stories/.
Things to know
- Changes show after the cache clears. Pages and sitemaps your host has already cached keep their old version until the cache refreshes; purge the site cache to see the change straight away.
- A Yoast "allow indexing" choice is overridden on these pages; they stay out of search.
- To keep one of these pages in search, add it to a menu or give it more content. A developer can also use the
ds_utility_page_reasonfilter. - The site report lists which pages were kept out of search and why.