Hi folks,
We hid a blog post a couple of weeks ago, and Google Search Console just let us know that it was trying to index that page and got a 404 error.
My understanding is that hiding a post would also keep Google from trying to index the page any longer. Is there another step we need to take?
Thanks for any guidance.
Hi Natestell,
I think you might have to tell Google to not index the page, you can do this by setting the “seo.hidden” metafield value to “1” for the blog post.
Go to your store settings, and select “Custom Data” , then select “Blog posts”
Then click “Add definition”, then input the “Namespace and Key” field with “seo.hidden” (you can change the “Name” and “Description” as you like ), and select Integer type, then click “Save”
After saving, go to your blog post, then scroll down to the Metafields section, click “Show all”
Then for the metafield you have created earlier, set the value to “1” . Shopify will add the meta tag “noindex, nofollow” on the blog post if you set this metafield value to “1”, if you would like this blog post to be indexed in the future, you can remove the value and leave it blank.
Hope this helps! (Official Shopify docs mentioning about the seo.hidden metafield : https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/marketing/seo#step-2-hide-a-resource-from-search-engines-and-sitemaps)
Cheers,
Axel Kee
Thanks so much for the detailed how-to, Axel! I’ve applied these changes, and submitted the fix to GSC for validation. Will report back once I get the reply from Google.
I’m curious about what the “Hidden” value does for blog posts and pages? As in, what’s the rationale for not applying the noindex or nofollow tags when a store admin sets the visibility to hidden?
You’re welcome Natestell!
The “Hidden” value does make the blog post and page unaccessible, returning a 404 Not Found, usually search engine will catch up to this and remove index soon, my guess is that the Google Search Engine still haven’t remove your page from their database yet, you can manually request removal of URL following their guide here : https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2007/04/requesting-removal-of-content-from-our
Hi Axel,
Just an update that applying the metafield didn’t appear to fix the indexing issue on my hidden blog post. It also looks like the Google Developers article is a bit too out of date (it’s from 2007), as Web Master Tools are now Google Search Console which doesn’t seem to have the option to remove the page from their database.
I think I’ll probably just follow your note here and wait until Goolge removes the URL from their database: “usually search engine will catch up to this and remove index soon, my guess is that the Google Search Engine still haven’t remove your page from their database yet.”
Thanks again for the input.
