This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Hide from Search

Description

The Hide from Search plugin allows you to hide individual WordPress pages from search engines and/or WordPress search results.

Why?

It isn’t uncommon to have pages on your site that are public, but not intended to be found. Take, for example, a download page where people who have signed up for your email newsletter can download your amazing white paper. You don’t want just anyone to be able to download your white paper, but the page has to be public because people who sign up for your newsletter aren’t going to be logged into your site. You can’t have people who perform a search for the title of your whitepaper finding it in search. The solution? Download this plugin and hide your download page from WordPress search as well as search engines!

How?

Using this plugin is simple:

  1. Install the plugin
  2. Activate the plugin
  3. Go to a post you want to hide and check the ‘Hide from search’ checkbox on the bottom right of the screen.
  4. Save your changes

Features

  • Works with custom post types
  • No settings page, just a simple, easy-to-use checkbox
  • Clean, well written code that won’t bog down your site

Screenshots

  • Using the plugin is simple, just check the box to hide a page or post.

Installation

Prerequisites

If you don’t meet the below requirements, I highly recommend you upgrade your WordPress install or move to a web host that supports a more recent version of PHP.

  • Requires WordPress version 4.7 or greater
  • Requires PHP version 5.6 or greater

The Easy Way

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to ‘Plugins’ and then click on ‘Add New’.
  2. In the search box, type in ‘Hide from Search’ and hit enter. This plugin should be the first and likely the only result.
  3. Click on the ‘Install’ link.
  4. Once installed, click the ‘Activate this plugin’ link.

The Hard Way

  1. Download the .zip file containing the plugin.
  2. Upload the file into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory and unzip
  3. Find the plugin in the WordPress admin on the ‘Plugins’ page and click ‘Activate’

Usage Instructions

Once the plugin is installed and activated, go to a post you want to hide and check the ‘Hide from search’ checkbox on
the bottom right of the screen and save your changes. Viola! The post has been hidden!

Reviews

Mis-Genver 31, 2024
This plugin definitely works, but I find that it’s hit or miss. Using it with WordPress products, some products still show in search results even with the boxes ticked while others don’t. Not sure why the inconsistency is there.
Metheven 18, 2023
Happy to adjust my rating if I’m wrong but currently it appears you need to enter Edit to apply any changes. I have the need to hide hundreds of pages in a very large website and it would be so handy if the options were placed inside the Quick Edit. Furthermore, it would be even more handy if you could then select multiple pages and edit them together.
Metheven 3, 2023
This plugin is well coded and maintained. It’s FREE FROM: bloat, clutter, nagging messages, spam advertising (as some other plugins in this category are not.) We’ve tested Hide from Search and it indeed does hide whichever you want: search engines and/or WordPress search results for any Posts/ Pages/ WooCommerce Products/ LearnDash Courses and all other Custom Post Types that we’ve seen (that are coded to the WordPress standards of posts/pages). Our heartfelt thanks to, Micah Wood, the plugin author for being generous and continuing to make WordPress.org the wonderful open sourced enabler that allows individuals, businesses, organizations and educators all around the world to be able to build anything they want on the web, as well as or better than any other content management system! Note: We have indeed tested all of the other plugins in this category listed on WordPress.org, prior to migrating 853 client sites (migration still in progress) from one of the other plugins that recently ruined a plugin they either purchased or took over by littering the WordPress Dashboard with spam advertisements and making the plugin unnecessarily bloated.
Ebrel 1, 2021
Hide From Search is super easy to use…and it works. Specifically, it helps you take any post or page and easily ensure public users don’t find it in search. Use case: hide thank you pages and confirmation pages. As far as customer support goes, I emailed Micah about an issue and he released a fix the same day. Highly recommended!
Hwevrer 9, 2021
Been using it for months, works as intended to remove pages from the footer. I’ve tried it with a few wordpress themes and it works nicely.
Read all 16 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Hide from Search” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Hide from Search” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Hide from Search” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.1.6

  • Version bump to fix automated release process.

1.1.5

  • Fix issue with wp-forge/container package not being compatible with PHP versions older than 8.0

1.1.4

  • Minor maintenance release

1.1.3

  • Fix PHP notice when Yoast SEO is active
  • General security updates for dependencies.

1.1.2

  • Fix issue where posts were hidden from users when searching within the WordPress admin area.

1.1.1

  • Bugfix: Function _wp_register_meta_args_whitelist changed to _wp_register_meta_args_allowed_list in WordPress 5.5.

1.1

  • Implemented ability to hide from search engines as well.

1.0.2

  • Tested in WordPress version 5.4

1.0.1

  • Tested in WordPress version 5.3.2

1.0.0

  • Tested in WordPress version 4.7
  • Escaped translated strings, for security.
  • Converted singleton to static class.
  • Updated .pot translation file to include additional plugin information.

0.4.3

  • Tested in WordPress version 4.5.2

0.4.2

  • Tested in WordPress version 4.4.3

0.4.1

  • Tested in WordPress version 4.2.4

0.4

  • Tested in WordPress version 4.0
  • Added additional comments to the code
  • Tweaked how translations are loaded.

0.3

  • Tested in WordPress version 3.5.1
  • Deleted MPRESS_HIDE_FROM_SEARCH_VERSION constant and created a public static variable instead
  • Fire class on plugins_loaded action instead of on load.
  • Added call to load_plugin_textdomain()

0.2

  • Added MPRESS_HIDE_FROM_SEARCH_VERSION constant
  • Made class a true singleton

0.1

  • Initial commit