How to refresh internal website search index?

[MarkRippstein]

There is a ton of information about refreshing external indexing, and I'm well informed about that...but what about updating internal indexing? I might be looking in the wrong places, but I can't seem to get any insight on this.

The problem: I've added several 'noindex' tags to some pages I don't want indexed via search, but these pages continue to be visible when someone searches from the search feature on our site. Google Search Console will eventually take away those pages, but what about the internal site search used on our Shopify site?

The questions: Is there something similar to Google Search Console for Shopify search? I know that some Shopify themes allow for filtering out content before results are displayed on your site, but I believe Shopify search should also respect the noindex tag. Is this something that can be forced to be refreshed or is there a typical time frame we should expect for the index to refresh (hours, days, weeks?)?

We launched the noindex code 2 days ago and all of the noindex pages are still visible when searching on our site. Your insight on this is greatly appreciated...even if it's just a link to a page I couldn't find on this topic 🙂

[MarkRippstein]

If it helps, one example case is my client Felted Sky.

URL: 
https://feltedsky.com/

Code added to theme:
{% if page_title contains 'Instruction Video' %}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
{% endif %}

Current results: The noindex code is appearing via Chrome's inspect tool, but the pages are still appearing on site search. At this moment, 40 pages appear in the index for the search term "instruction video"

https://feltedsky.com/search?q=%22instruction+video%22

Desired result: 0 pages should appear for that term

For those interested: It's ok for people to stumble upon these pages, but we'd prefer for the pages not to be indexed. Links to these pages are provided to people who purchased the product. We want to make it easy for people to get to once they have the link (so prefer not to put the information behind a password or login)....we just don't want the pages indexed or quickly found via a search on our site. And, to preempt those who feel differently, we know that it is a better buyer experience if they can search for the page anytime...but we don't want finding that page to be that easy. I hope this makes sense.

[flareAI]

Hello @MarkRippstein,

This is flareAI - Generating Sales from Google Search, on Autopilot. Helping Shopify merchants in generating $5+ million in sales from Google Search.

If helpful, please consider Like and Accept solution.

Adding noindex will only tell the search engines to avoid indexing the web page. It won't exclude the page from your Shopify site search.

For hiding a page from your website search, change the visibility settings within the page.

For doing this follow the below steps:

1. Login to your Shopify store
2. Go to Products
3. Click the Product you want to hide from the search
4. Right side under SALES CHANNELS AND APPS, click on Manage
5. Uncheck the Online Store option

6. Save the changes

Make sure you are getting good amount of traffic and sales. You will get organic orders only if your products are indexed on Google. For this you have to inform search engines of your regular updates. flareAI automates the update submissions to all the major search engines. flareAI is a bot, so unlike a traditional stuff you don't need to do a thing. flareAI helps growing your Shopify store on Google Search, and 20+ of the world's largest free sales channels.

I hope my suggestion will help you.

Happy selling!
flareAI

[MarkRippstein]

Thank you for responding and sorry for not being clearer: Removing a product from the store or search is not the issue, removing a page (Online Store > Pages > Page) is the issue. Do you happen to know how to hide a Page from Shopify Search?

[flareAI]

Hello @MarkRippstein,

This is Gina from flareAI: your Fully Automated Free Sales Machine. I hope you're having a good day. We are helping Shopify Merchants grow their store presence in Google and other major sales channels and generate $5+ million in sales from Google Search, on autopilot.

If my suggestions are helpful to you, please let me know by giving a like or marking it as a solution.

You can restrict the Shopify search to show only product pages.

To achieve this effect, edit the search form in your theme to specify which types of pages are searched. The search form will always open with <form action=“/search”, and could appear in multiple files within your theme.

In the case of the Debut theme, the search form appears in the search.liquid template and the search-form.liquid snippets.

Open the search form snippet and add a hidden field like below:

<input type="hidden" name="type" value="product">

This will restrict giving only product pages in the storefront search result.

You can read this blog for more details.

Is your competition out-spending your store marketing budget? Every marketing channel demands more $$$, except one. Consumers trust Google and rely on it even more and are using at a rate that exceeds the growth of display and organic social. flareAI actively grows your store presence on Google Search. flareAI will help to scale your site sustainably at NO Agency fees, NO Pay-per-click, NO paid marketplaces. With flareAI, your site can access the world's dominant Free eCommerce services in one Shopify App.

Hope this was helpful! Cheers!

Gina
flareAI