How do I hide the site from search engines?

Stop search engines indexing the site while it is being built, and switch it back on at launch.

You will have told search engines not to index the site.

Before you start

You need the site-settings Edit permission.

Open Site Settings and choose Advanced, then find Search engine indexing.
Switch Allow search engines to index this site off.
Press Save. The switch takes effect only after saving.

A warning banner appears, robots.txt blocks all crawlers and the sitemap becomes empty.

Forgetting to switch it back on keeps the site out of search results. At launch, switch Allow search engines to index this site on and save again.
The switch reads as the opposite of the stored "do not index" setting, so "off" here means "do not index".

Last updated: October 18, 2026