Important – following the steps below will result in pages from your site being removed from search engine indexes and you should ensure that you understand the implications of this before following the process outlined below.
There may be times when you want to block an individual page, product or collection from your Shopify store from being indexed in Google (or other search engines) and whilst there are paid apps that offer this functionality we thought we should mention a great free option that we have found for doing so.
The first thing you will want to do is head over to http://shopifyfd.com/ and grab the bookmarklet that we will be using in this tutorial. Please note that whilst this can be used for free, the author does offer the option to leave a tip and it’s always good to spread the love and help support future development 🙂
Once you have the bookmarklet or extension installed head over to your store and go to the page, product or collection that you would like to block from indexing and once in the editor screen click the bookmarklet or extension link and you should see a metafields editor pop up as shown below:
In the form on the right hand side you will need to enter the following values in the corresponding fields:
“namespace” : “seo”
“key” : “hidden”
“value” : 1
Once done, click the save as integer button and then make sure you click the save button at the top right hand side of the page.
There is also the option to remove the page from being listed in your XML sitemap and if you want the item to be permanently hidden from search engines it is probably a good idea to select this option.
If you are only blocking an item on a temporary basis and want to restore it in the future then you can go back into the product, collection or page and remove the meta field as shown below:
As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, this will remove pages from your site from search engine indexes and it is important that you understand what you are doing. If you have any questions or are unsure if this is the right option for you then feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to try and help you understand if you’re doing the right thing.