The default WordPress search behavior is that it will display results from all published posts and pages. This usually works fine for many people, however, sometimes you might want to hide some certain posts and pages from the search results. That’s why, in this article you will learn how to exclude certain posts/pages from WordPress search results page.

Why exclude pages from results page?

You might want to hide some specific posts from search results page in WordPress when:

  • You don’t want about, contact, our team and such pages to be displayed in search results
  • When you are running a membership site in WordPress and don’t want search to display some paid content to non-members
  • When you think that the particular post doesn’t have much value to be displayed to visitors

Excluding specific posts and pages from search results page

To exclude some specific posts and pages from appearing WordPress search results page, install and activate Search Exclude plugin.

This plugin is very easy and simple to use. Once activated, you will be able to see a new option to “Exclude from search results” in the post/page edit page. To exclude a certain page or post from search results, simply checkmark this option.

exclude post wordpress

That’s all you need to do. Now your visitors won’t be able to see this specific page or post in WordPress search results page.

Pro tip: You can also move this “Search Exclude” box to the top if you are going to use it frequently. To move, just drag and drop it to where you would like it to display.

To view a list of all the page/posts that you have excluded till now, go to Settings > Search Exclude.

search-exclude-wordpress

Note that this won’t prevent your page from being indexed in Google. Visitors can still be able to visit this post or page from Google or other search engines.

If you have any questions, then let us know in the comments section below.

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