noindex SEO

Fine-grained control over how search engines index and display your WordPress content. Apply 5 independent robots directives to 22 different page contexts with flexible implementation methods.

5 Robots Directives:

• noindex: Prevent search engines from indexing the page
• nofollow: Prevent search engines from following links on the page
• noarchive: Prevent search engines from showing cached versions
• nosnippet: Prevent search engines from showing text snippets in results
• noimageindex: Prevent search engines from indexing images on the page

Implementation Methods:

• HTML Meta Tags: Traditional method, easy to verify in page source (default)
• HTTP Headers: More robust, works with all content types including PDFs and images
• Both: Maximum compatibility for all scenarios

Control Levels:

• Global Settings: Apply directives to 22 different page contexts (posts, pages, archives, etc.)
• Granular Control (Optional): Override global settings for individual posts, pages, and custom post types via meta boxes in the editor

Perfect for:

• Blocking indexing of attachment pages while allowing link following
• Preventing duplicate content issues with flexible directive combinations
• Controlling archive page indexing with granular control
• Managing pagination SEO with independent settings
• Protecting private content from search engine caching
• Preventing snippet display while still indexing content

Main pages

• Front Page: Block the indexing of the site’s front page.
• Home: Block the indexing of the site’s home page.

Pages and Posts

• Page: Block the indexing of the site’s pages.
• Privacy Policy: Block the indexing of the site’s privacy policy page.
• Single: Block the indexing of a post on the site.
• Singular: Block the indexing of a post or a page of the site.

Taxonomies

• Category: Block the indexing of the site categories. The lists where the posts appear.
• Tag: Block the indexing of the site’s tags. The lists where the posts appear.

Dates

• Date: Block the indexing when any date-based archive page (i.e. a monthly, yearly, daily or time-based archive) of the site. The lists where the posts appear.
• Day: Block the indexing when a daily archive of the site. The lists where the posts appear.
• Month: Block the indexing when a monthly archive of the site. The lists where the posts appear.
• Time: Block the indexing when an hourly, “minutely”, or “secondly” archive of the site. The lists where the posts appear.
• Year: Block the indexing when a yearly archive of the site. The lists where the posts appear.

Archives

• Archive: Block the indexing of any type of Archive page. Category, Tag, Author and Date based pages are all types of Archives. The lists where the posts appear.
• Author: Block the indexing of the author’s page, where the author’s publications appear.
• Post Type Archive: Block the indexing of any post type page.

Pagination

• Pagination: Block the indexing of the pagination, i.e. all pages other than the main page of an archive.

Search

• Search: Block the indexing of the internal search result pages.

Attachments

• Attachment: Block the indexing of an attachment document to a post or page. An attachment is an image or other file uploaded through the post editor’s upload utility. Attachments can be displayed on their own “page” or template. This will not cause the indexing of the image or file to be blocked.

Previews

• Customize Preview: Block the indexing when a content is being displayed in customize mode.
• Preview: Block the indexing when a single post is being displayed in draft mode.

Error Page

• Error 404: This will cause an error page to be blocked from being indexed. As it is an error page, it should not be indexed per se, but just in case.

Important note: if you have any doubt about any of the following items it is best not to activate the option as you could lose results in the search engines.

Using the plugin

REST API

The plugin exposes two read-only endpoints under /wp-json/noindex-seo/v1/ so headless consumers can read the configuration:

• GET /settings: returns the consolidated settings array (contexts and directives plus config). Requires an authenticated user with the manage_options capability.
• GET /effective?post_id=123: returns the list of active directives for a specific post, computed with the same precedence used on the front-end (per-post override, then per-post-type default, then the built-in context). Public only for published, non-password-protected posts; everything else requires edit_post capabilities.

On WordPress versions with XML sitemaps (5.5+), URLs that are noindexed are automatically excluded from the core sitemaps.

Compatibility

• WordPress: 4.0 – 7.1
• PHP: 5.6 – 8.5

Compliance

This plugin adheres to the following security measures and review protocols for each version:

• WordPress Plugin Handbook
• WordPress Plugin Security
• WordPress APIs Security
• WordPress Coding Standards
• Plugin Check (PCP)

Privacy

• This plugin does not collect any information about your site, your identity, the plugins, themes or content the site has.

Vulnerabilities

• No vulnerabilities have been published up to version 3.1.3.

Found a security vulnerability? Please report it to us privately at the noindex SEO GitHub repository.

Automatic download

Visit the plugin section in your WordPress, search for [noindex-seo]; download and install the plugin.

Manual download

Extract the contents of the ZIP and upload the contents to the /wp-content/plugins/noindex-seo/ directory. Once uploaded, it will appear in your plugin list.