Secret Sale for existing products

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Topic summary

A store owner wants to create a “Secret Sale” accessible only via direct links (for ads) using duplicate products tagged “secret-sale” with discounted prices. They need help hiding these products from site search, search dropdowns, and search engines.

Solutions proposed:

  • SEO hiding: Use Shopify’s seo.hidden metafield or add <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> in theme.liquid for products tagged “secret-sale”
  • Search exclusion: Add Liquid code to product card and predictive search snippets using {% unless product.tags contains "secret-sale" %} to filter results
  • Collection setup: Create an automated collection based on the “secret-sale” tag, exclude from navigation, and share direct URL only
  • Alternative approach: Instead of duplicating products, use Shopify discount codes that auto-apply via URL parameters shared in ads
  • Third-party tools: Locksmith app for private collections, or Growth Suite for dynamic visitor-based discounts

Multiple developers offered implementation assistance. The discussion remains open with the original poster not yet confirming their chosen solution.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
3

This:
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/seo/hide-a-page-from-search-engines#custom-metafield

There is a lot of info to google about seo.hidden metafield if you need details.

This would not require any coding.
Make sure product does not get included in any automatic collections.

You may also want to redirect people who did not have a proper link to the full-priced product – that would require some code. DM me here if you like

You can also approach it differently:

  1. create a discount for this product
  2. use link which will automatically apply this discount to share via ads
    Check this How to insert discount code into URL so discount is auto-applied to all prices