Technology Help Website: Make a Page Non-Discoverable

Occasionally there is a need to publish a page on the Technology Help website (it.umn.edu) in order to get feedback from various stakeholders, but the content should not be discoverable in the site search nor in search engine results. There are two settings that can be used to hide the published page from search.

This article covers:

These settings should be set before publishing the page.

Exclude the page from being indexed by site search

  1. Log in to the Technology Help website.
  2. Create a new page or find a previously created page.
  3. Select Edit.
  4. Select Exclude from Search in the right sidebar to expand the option.
  5. Select the checkbox for Yes, exclude this entity from the search indexes.
    The checkbox for Exclude from Search is highlighted.

Exclude the page from the Site Map so that search engines cannot discover the page

  1. Scroll down and select Simple XML Sitemap in the right sidebar to expand the option.
  2. Select the option Do not index this <content type> entity in sitemap Default.
  3. Select Regenerate all sitemaps after hitting Save.
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Publish
  5. Select Save.
    Example results of previous steps in Sitemaps

Once these settings are enabled you can publish the page and it will not be included in search results.

Make content discoverable

When the page is ready to be made discoverable in search results on the Technology Help website and in Search Engine results, you will want to reverse the settings that were outlined above:

  • The checkbox should not be selected for Exclude from Search.
    The exclude from search option with the checkbox not selected.
  • In the Simple XML Sitemap settings select Index this <content type> entity in sitemap Default (default).
    • Do not change the additional options
      The simple xml sitemap settings.

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7664