Are you worried about how to hide a WordPress page from Google? Here is all you need to know!
For the sake of privacy concerns or if you want to keep unwanted users away, sometimes you need to freeze out a page to appear in Google search results because it is not appropriate for your site’s content.
Google frequently looks all over the internet for content. Not every time you want to display the content on the site to be accessed by search engines. For this reason, you need to hide your WordPress page or site from Google.
When you hide content from the bots, you cover up the content from search engines. Only the relevant users of the site or page can access the content.
When To Hide A Page From Google
There are numerous reasons why you feel that you hide your page from Google and other public.
Your website’s content can be defined as what it’s all about as Google can lead and scan your website content. That’s why Google categorizes unique pages within its search. Yet, you can stop Google from sorting different pages of your website.
If you want to hide a website page that doesn’t have any concerns with outside users for example the website page you develop for ownership verification.
For confidential information that may plunge into bad hands, you may exclude pages that have sensitive information to protect your privacy.
If your web is under development then hiding content from Google is also useful. Google can’t index undeveloped websites in its search results.
How To Hide WordPress Page From Google (4 Simple Methods)
In this article, I will explain how to hide WordPress pages from Google. There are various methods that we discuss here. You can choose one that matches your needs. The methods are
- Hide a WordPress page from search engines using Plugin
- Hide a WordPress page from search engines using a robots.txt file
- Using password protection
- Hide a WordPress site until it is ready
1. Hide A Wordpress Page Using A Plugin
By using a plugin like Yoast SEO you can hide a WordPress page from Google. Noindex or nofollow controls are planned to navigate the bots away from different articles.
For example, the noindex command is generally used to show Google that the following post or page does not need to be indexed in the search list. If by chance a bot through metadata comes across a post for index then the overall content is omitted.
The Yoast SEO plugin had a variety of characteristics for making better the optimization of search engines like making the turn on and off of noindex/ nofollow commands easy to use. It is used by over 2 million websites.
Process Of Installation
In the first step, you need to install the setup and then activate the plugin. It will be installed in the new section of WordPress. This plugin has the built-in ability for you to hide WordPress pages from Google.
Currently, you have access to the various tools that are necessary for creating and marketing content. After the installation and activation are done you need to modify the page that you want to hide from Google.
In the editor scroll down the page until you find the Yoast SEO plugin window. It will be under the content section of the post. There are a variety of icons available. You should select the setting icons from the list.
Below the option of “ meta robots index,” you find the nofollow command. Under “Meta robots follow” select the option for nofollow.
The major benefit of this option is that Google can not use any links to control the search index. This option will be useful for you to stop the post that you want to hide from indexes in the search results.
At last, when you update the post the search engines will then ignore the content and it will not appear in the search results.
2. By Using The robots.txt File
This file is a configuration file that delivers instructions to Google bots. Some other search engines will stand for this file but not all of them. On the other hand, some nasty files and content scrapers will ignore this file.
This file would be pointless because it is accessible to the public. Everyone can see the URLs that you are hiding and can also read the robots.txt file. In this file, any inaccurate instructions can lead to an adverse effect on your site’s SEO, that’s why for beginners this method is not beneficial.
By using your website FTP client you can modify the robots.txt file that is connected to your website or by using the file manager in your WordPress hosting panel and navigating to the root directory of your website.
In order to stop Google from indexing a page, just need to make a few changes. It takes only two minutes to add a single line of text to it.
For WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is like a Swiss army knife of SEO tools. To deal with Google search optimization it retains a comprehensive range of functionalities.
On the left side find the SEO area and click the “Tools” option. From the Yoast dashboard, you have to turn on the advanced option to find this command. A large number of editors are provided by Yoast.
Edit The robots.txt File
Now to edit the robots.txt file you need to click the link “file editor” from the list. The robots.txt file will be shown here if it is available. On the other hand, if it is not available then there is a need to create the robots.txt file.
Just by clicking on the robots.txt file Coast will create it. One other thing good to know about it is that you can also edit your ht. access form from this page.
If the loaded page shows a group of coding just click the back button. In Yoast, sometimes this happens while creating a robots.txt file. Sometimes the page is not loaded accurately even when the file will be created.
Now the file is available for editing. In robots.txt file editors, enter the code
- User-agent: *
- Disallow: /your-page/
The line user agent will enable you to point to specific bots. The asterisk “*” sign is used to include all the search engines. The other line is a piece of URL that comes after your domain name.
Let’s consider you want to hide a post with the following URL:
http://add.com/2023/04/my-blog-post/”,
You can add this URL to your robots.txt file like this:
- User-agent: *
- Disallow: /2023/04/my-blog-post/
After you enter the URL you want to hide, click the button “ save changes to robots.txt” at the bottom.
Not all bots will be stopped from scraping your content by using the robots.txt file because it is publicly accessible. However, Google bots may look up to your privacy and react to this file.
3. By Using Password Protection
Password protection is a technique that uses a different strategy. In this technique, you can set a password to protect your page instead of requesting Google not to index the page.
Then the users with the password can only have access. WordPress has its own built-in privacy settings. In the WordPress editor Under the document set, there is a publishing window where you will find an option for an “edit” link to open privacy settings.
A drop-down section will be opened where you can make a page private, public, or password-protected. If you select the “password protected or private” option then it will disable Google to crawl the page content.
The text box for “Password” will come up directly. Now set a strong password for the page and click “OK”. Once you update the page any visitor who attempts to access it will be asked to enter a password to see the content.
Now no visitors or search engines like Google can index your page in search results. But it also has a drawback in that you have to provide a password to an audience who needs to read the content.
Any users who have the Editor role can read the content in case you use the “ private” option. It can also have rare opportunities from paid content to business memos and information.
4. Hide A WordPress Page Until It Is Ready
When you are building, redesigning, or doing a major theme or updating the plugin, you need to hide your WordPress site from Google and other public. The simplest way is to set your website in maintenance mode by using a plugin like Seedprod.
First, you need to install and activate the plugin. After activation, to enter your license go to the “Seedprod” setting page. This information is located under your account on the Seedprod website.
Now the time is to navigate the SeedProd pages. Go to the “Maintenance Mode” page and turn the toggle from ‘inactive’ to ‘active’. Click on the “maintenance mode page ‘ button, you are now enabled to create a temporary page that you allow the visitors to see until your site is underdeveloped.
You select a template first. On the template, you will see two icons. By clicking the magnifying glass icon you can preview the template and by the red tick icon you can select the required template.
Now you will be at SeedProd drag and drop page builder to customize your maintenance mode page. Here you can upload a picture for the background to match your branding and edit the text. If you want more blocks you can add them from the left column.
When you are done with your website design you can publish it. Next to ‘save Click the drop-down menu button and then click ‘publish’. Your website has been published.
Only the maintenance page is accessed by Google, other website content is hidden. You can see your maintenance page by clicking the “ See Live Page” button.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article will cover all the aspects you need to hide a WordPress page from Google. All that matters is that you succeed in preventing Google from accessing and indexing your WordPress page by whatever method you choose and you feel comfortable with it.
If you want to make your page fully inaccessible to the public you need to set it to“private”. Due to this Google or other scrapers can not be able to reach your content.
