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:

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

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!