How to Hide Your WordPress Site from Search Engines

A blond girl with hands over her face hiding and text: How to Hide Your WordPress Site from Search Engines

Do you know how to hide your WordPress site from search engines? Or why you would even want to? This short post will answer both of these questions.

Have you ever done an internet search and clicked on a link in the results page that took you to an unfinished, or worse yet, empty WordPress site?

The first time that happened to me I couldn’t understand why bloggers would allow their work-in-process to be discovered on the internet.

Then one day I was testing SEO on my live website and came across a development site of mine that was in process. Not good!

These days websites get indexed so quickly that it’s really important to hide your WordPress site from search engines while you are developing it.

Here’s how:

1. Click on Settings –> Reading:

WordPress Settings

2. Check the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checkbox:

hide your WordPress site

Now there is a chance that the search engine will ignore this directive. So it’s not a foolproof solution.

You can also put your site in maintenance mode in which case your content is completely blocked by a maintenance page.

Here’s a quick video tutorial that will show you how to hide your WordPress site by using the WordPress Reading Settings:


Watch Our Video Tutorial:

Please click “Video Transcript” below to view the Video Transcript.

00:00
Hi there! Today we’re going to take a quick look at how to hide your WordPress site from the search  
00:06
engines. The reason you might want to do that is  because your site is in development or test mode  
00:13
and you don’t want your visitors to see it while  it’s in that state. So this is really simple to do! 
00:18
In order to hide your WordPress site from the  search engines, first log into your WordPress  
00:24
dashboard. Then come down to Settings > Reading and  once you’re into the reading settings come down  
00:36
to search engine visibility. And check this check  box here that says discourage search engines from  
00:41
indexing the site. Save your changes and like  this note says it is up to the search engines  
00:50
to honor this request. But I have found for the  most part they generally will. So once you’re  
00:57
done with your development testing and you’re  ready to publish your site live, make sure you  
01:01
come back to the Settings > Reading. And then come  down here, uncheck this box so the search engines  
01:13
will no longer be discouraged from indexing  your site. Save Changes and you’re all set! So I  
01:23
hope this has been helpful to you and I thank  you so much for stopping by! Have a great day!


So now you know how to hide your WordPress site from search engines while you are developing it.

Just remember to uncheck the box when you are done with your website so that the search engines will index it the next time around.

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