Search Exclude

Description

With this plugin you can exclude any page, post or whatever from the WordPress search results by checking off the corresponding checkbox on post/page edit page.
Supports quick and bulk edit.

On the plugin settings page you can also see the list of all the items that are hidden from search.

Presentation

QuadLayers | Community

Installation

Upload search-exclude directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Go to any post/page edit page and check off the checkbox Exclude from Search Results if you don’t want the post/page to be shown in the search results

Screenshots

screenshot-1.png
screenshot-2.png

Faq

Does this plugin affect SEO?

No, it does not affect crawling and indexing by search engines.
The ONLY thing it does is hiding selected post/pages from your site search page. Not altering SEO indexing.

If you want posts/pages to be hidden from search engines you may add the following snippet to your functions.php:

function add_meta_for_search_excluded()
{
    global $post;
    if (false !== array_search($post->ID, get_option('sep_exclude', array()))) {
        echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />', "\n";
    }
}
add_action('wp_head', 'add_meta_for_search_excluded');

Note: already indexed pages will remain indexed for quite a while. In order to remove them from Google index, you may use Google Search Console (or similar tool for other engines).

Are there any hooks or actions available to customize plugin behaviour?

Yes.
There is an action searchexclude_hide_from_search.
You can pass any post/page/custom_post ids as an array in the first parameter.
The second parameter specifies state of visibility in search. Pass true if you want to hide posts/pages,
or false – if you want show them in the search results.

Example:
Let’s say you want “Exclude from Search Results” checkbox to be checked off by default
for newly created posts, but not pages. In this case you can add following code
to your theme’s function.php:

add_filter('default_content', 'exclude_new_post_by_default', 10, 2);
function exclude_new_post_by_default($content, $post)
{
    if ('post' === $post->post_type) {
        do_action('searchexclude_hide_from_search', array($post->ID), true);
    }
}

Also there is a filter searchexclude_filter_search.
With this filter you can turn on/off search filtering dynamically.
Parameters:
$exclude – current search filtering state (specifies whether to filter search or not)
$query – current WP_Query object

By returning true or false you can turn search filtering respectively.

Example:
Let’s say you need to disable search filtering if searching by specific post_type.
In this case you could add following code to you functions.php:

add_filter('searchexclude_filter_search', 'filterForProducts', 10, 2);
function filterForProducts($exclude, $query)
{
    return $exclude && 'product' !== $query->get('post_type');
}

Reviews

A no brainer

By stanleyboise on November 22, 2025

This plugin is a must have.

Perfect

By Michael Kavanagh (michaelkav) on November 20, 2025

Works perfectly.

Well, that was easy

By unleashedfinancial on November 15, 2025

Nice to see a plugin work without any guess work or troubleshooting. Turn it on, go to your pages or posts, and bulk actions take care of the hide from search.

Thank you!

Very useful

By markech on October 29, 2025

Very useful

Simple and efficient

By axizebusiness on October 19, 2025

I recommande

Big Help

By craftyfox49 on October 11, 2025

My staging site just didn't work properly, so I installed this plugin to prevent anyone from finding it while I'm working on it.

Very handy

By nadev on October 8, 2025

Just what I needed and works like intended.

Good plugi

By hamidreza1370 on October 3, 2025

This plugin is very useful for websites, but it slows down search loading a little, if it could be faster, it would be phenomenal!

Very useful plugin

By Kim (kimn667) on September 30, 2025

This plugin is great for hiding content from internal search results. I've been using it for a few year now and it's super simple to use and has not caused any compatibility issues. My one request would be to have it be an option when bulk editing pages or posts. But even without that feature, it's a great plugin. Highly recommended.

Perfect!

By nakahara on September 20, 2025

Helped me. Really.

Changelog

2.5.8

fix: security issues

2.5.7

fix: php 7.2 errors

2.5.6

fix: update dependencies

2.5.5

fix: update dependencies

2.5.4

fix: improve get_terms to reduce term load time

2.5.3

fix: user editor posts permissions

2.5.2

fix: update dependencies

2.5.1

fix: update dependencies

2.5.0

fix: security issues

2.4.9

fix: load plugin textdomain

2.4.8

WordPress compatibility

2.4.7

fix: terms exclusion
fix: Content Control plugin compatibility

2.4.6

fix: update readme.txt

2.4.5

fix: search exclude in ajax

2.4.4

fix: load plugin textdomain

2.4.3

fix: search exclude documentation url

2.4.2

fix: update jetpack autoload

2.4.1

fix: php errors

2.4.0

fix: implement jetpack autoload

2.3.0

fix: php errors
fix: improve allowed screen logic
fix: scripts in custom post types
fix: advanced custom fields compatibility

2.2.0

fix: php errors

2.1.9

fix: php errors
fix: compatibility with classic editor

2.1.8

WordPress 6.7 compatibility

2.1.7

fix: WordPress 6.1.3 compatibility
fix: big queries
Remove notification

2.1.6

Refactor update

2.1.5

Refactor

2.1.4

WordPress compatibility

2.1.3

WordPress compatibility

2.1.2

WordPress compatibility

2.1.1

Packages update

2.1.0

WordPress compatibility

2.0.9

fix: PHP errors

2.0.8

Translation strings

2.0.7

WordPress compatibility

2.0.6

WordPress compatibility

2.0.5

Update portfolio link

2.0.4

WordPress compatibility

2.0.3

fix: strings translations

2.0.2

fix: strings translations

2.0.1

fix: strings translations

2.0.0

i18n implemented
Composer implemented
Autoload implemented
Rename files to fit WordPress Development rules
Rename classes to fit WordPress Development rules
Rename variables to fit WordPress Development rules

1.3.1

Author update.

1.3.0

fix: and rework bulk edit: The Bulk actions dropdown now offers hide/show actions.

1.2.7

This is a security release. All users are encouraged to upgrade.
fix: possible XSS vulnerability.

1.2.6

fix: compatibility with WordPress 5.5

1.2.5

Security release. More protection added.

1.2.4

Security release. All users are encouraged to update.
Added filter searchexclude_filter_permissions.

1.2.2

Added action searchexclude_hide_from_search
Added filter searchexclude_filter_search
Fixed Bulk actions for Firefox

1.2.1

Fixed bug when unable to save post on PHP <5.5 because of boolval() usage

1.2.0

Added quick and bulk edit support
Tested up to WP 4.1

1.1.0

Tested up to WP 4.0
Do not show Plugin on some service pages in Admin
Fixed conflict with bbPress
Fixed deprecation warning when DEBUG is on

1.0.6

Fixed search filtering for AJAX requests

1.0.5

Not excluding items from search results on admin interface

1.0.4

Fixed links on settings page with list of excluded items
Tested up to WP 3.9

1.0.3

Added support for excluding attachments from search results
Tested up to WP 3.8

1.0.2

Fixed: Conflict with Yoast WordPress SEO plugin

1.0.1

Fixed: PHP 5.2 compatibility

1.0

Initial release