Skip to content
WP Visibility

Everyday SEO

Keep a Page Out of Search

Set Noindex on one post from the editor sidebar, or on a whole post type or taxonomy from the Indexing section. The sitemap stops listing it; Google drops it once it recrawls the page.

Updated September 27, 2026

Docs

For one post or page, open the WP Visibility sidebar in the editor, expand Indexing, and set Search engine indexing to Noindex. For every entry of a post type, or every archive of a taxonomy, tick it under WP Visibility → Settings → Indexing. The page then sends noindex, follow, prints no canonical, and leaves the sitemap (and the llms.txt page list, if you switched llms.txt on). It still loads for anyone who has the link.

One post or page

Three places set the same value:

  • The WP Visibility sidebar, Indexing panel, Search engine indexing: Default, Index or Noindex. Link following below it offers Default, Follow or Nofollow.
  • The Post or Page settings sidebar, where a Search visibility panel offers one toggle, Hide from search engines. It sets Noindex and nothing else; switching it off returns the post to Default.
  • The classic editor, in the WP Visibility metabox, Search engine indexing with the same three options.

Default means inherit the site rules below. Index is an explicit override: a post set to Index stays indexable even if its whole post type is noindexed. The pre-publish panel warns when a post is about to publish with Noindex on, or with Default in a post type that Settings noindexes; it does not block publishing.

A category or tag

Edit the term under Posts → Categories or Tags. WP Visibility adds Search engine indexing to the edit form with the same three options. It applies to that term’s archive page, not to the posts in it.

A whole post type or taxonomy

WP Visibility → Settings, Indexing section:

  • Noindex these post types: every entry of a ticked type is kept out of search and out of the sitemap. Nothing is ticked by default.
  • Noindex these taxonomy archives: the archive pages of a ticked taxonomy. Formats (post formats) is ticked by default.

Archives and search results

Four switches in the same section cover these pages. Internal search results (on by default) and date archives (on) are noindexed out of the box; author archives (off) and paginated archive pages from page 2 onward (off) are indexable until you switch them on. The 404 page is always noindex.

What the page sends

WP Visibility adds its directives to WordPress’s own robots meta tag. A noindexed page sends only noindex, follow, or noindex, nofollow when nofollow is set too, and prints no canonical link. An indexable page sends the snippet, image and video preview limits from the Indexing section.

The site-wide switch beats everything. When Settings → Reading is set to discourage search engines, WordPress prints a noindex robots meta tag on every page (WordPress documentation, checked September 27, 2026) and WP Visibility does not argue, so a per-post Index cannot make a staging site indexable.

What the sitemap does

  • A noindexed post, page or term is left out of the sitemap, and a noindexed type or taxonomy has no sitemap file at all. A post set to Index stays in, unless its whole post type is noindexed: that type has no sitemap file, so the post is indexable but not listed.
  • Sitemap files are cached for up to a week. Saving a post or editing a term clears the cache. If you set noindex another way, through the post type and taxonomy lists in Settings, WP-CLI, an import or an assistant ability, run wp visibility flush or save any post so the sitemap is rebuilt on its next request.
  • A noindexed post or page also leaves the llms.txt page list, and once Noindex is saved, the optional IndexNow module stops announcing it when it is published or updated.

What noindex does not do

  • It does not remove the page from results at once. The engine has to recrawl the page and read the tag; how long that takes is up to the engine. Google says a revisit can take months for some pages (Google Search Central, checked September 27, 2026).
  • It does not stop people opening the page. For that, set a password or make it private in WordPress (WordPress documentation, checked September 27, 2026).
  • Do not also block the URL in robots.txt. A blocked URL cannot be crawled, so the engine never sees the noindex and may keep the old listing (Google Search Central, checked September 27, 2026).
  • It does not redirect. If the page has moved, redirect it instead.

From the command line

wp visibility set 123 --noindex=1
wp visibility set 123 --noindex=0
wp visibility set 123 --noindex=-1
wp visibility settings set noindex_author_archives true
wp visibility settings set noindexed_post_types '["testimonial"]'

1 is noindex, 0 inherits the site rules, -1 forces index. settings set noindexed_post_types replaces the whole list, so name every type you want noindexed.