A critical vulnerability was discovered in React Server Components (Next.js). Our systems remain protected but we advise to update packages to newest version. Learn More

Ben Nitti
Oct 6, 2021
  5246
(2 votes)

How to exclude pages from your search index, sitemaps and internet search engines

Your client wants to exclude certain pages from showiing up in your site's search results, they also want prevent these pages from being crawled by external search engines (Google, Bing etc.) and lastly they want them removed from their sitemap.xml file.  All of this can be achieved and controlled with a checkbox property on the Settings tab in the editor. I'll demonstrate below. 

Create an interface with a boolean property that inherits IContent

	public interface IDisableIndexing : IContent
	{
		bool DisableIndex { get; set; }
	}

Add it to your base class or any page type 

    public abstract class SitePageData : PageData, IDisableIndex
    {
        [CultureSpecific]
		[Display(Name = "Disable Indexing",
			Description = "Removes the page from search index, sitemap and search engines",
			GroupName = SystemTabNames.Settings,
			Order = 10)]
		public virtual bool DisableIndex { get; set; }
    }

Optimizely Search & Navigation

You can filter  from your Optimizely Search & Navigation search index by creating a module dependency class for your search conventions (this where IContent is implemented)

	[ModuleDependency(typeof(IndexingModule))]
	public class FindConventionsInitialization : IInitializableModule
	{
		public void Initialize(InitializationEngine context)
		{
			var client = SearchClient.Instance;
			ContentIndexer.Instance.Conventions.ForInstancesOf<IHasDisableIndex>().ShouldIndex(x => !x.DisableIndex);
		}

		public void Uninitialize(InitializationEngine context) { }
	}

External Search Engines

Use the same boolean property to add instructions for search robots from the <head></head> element in your layout view

<head>
    @if (Model.DisableIndex)
    {
		<meta name="ROBOTS" content="noindex, nofollow" />
    }
</head>

Sitemaps

If you're using the Geta Sitemap generator you can extend it and filter these pages from being added to when the xml file is being generated. Create a class that inherits from the abstract base SitemapXmlGenerator class and interface ICommerceAndStandardSitemapXmlGenerator. Override the AddFilteredContentElement method and from there you can exlude the pages with IDisableIndex.  

    public class CommerceAndStandardSitemapXmlGenerator : SitemapXmlGenerator, ICommerceAndStandardSitemapXmlGenerator
	{
		public CommerceAndStandardSitemapXmlGenerator(
			ISitemapRepository sitemapRepository, 
			IContentRepository contentRepository, 
			UrlResolver urlResolver, 
			ISiteDefinitionRepository siteDefinitionRepository, 
			ILanguageBranchRepository languageBranchRepository, 
			IContentFilter contentFilter) 
			: base(sitemapRepository,  contentRepository, urlResolver, siteDefinitionRepository, languageBranchRepository, contentFilter)
		{
		}

		//Filter content from xml sitemap
		protected override void AddFilteredContentElement(CurrentLanguageContent languageContentInfo, IList<XElement> xmlElements)
		{
			var sitemapContent = languageContentInfo.Content as IHasDisableIndex;

			if (sitemapContent != null && sitemapContent.DisableIndex)
			{
				return;
			}

			base.AddFilteredContentElement(languageContentInfo, xmlElements);
		}
	}
Oct 06, 2021

Comments

Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Building simple Opal tools for product search and content creation

Optimizely Opal tools make it easy for AI agents to call your APIs – in this post we’ll build a small ASP.NET host that exposes two of them: one fo...

Pär Wissmark | Dec 13, 2025 |

CMS Audiences - check all usage

Sometimes you want to check if an Audience from your CMS (former Visitor Group) has been used by which page(and which version of that page) Then yo...

Tuan Anh Hoang | Dec 12, 2025

Data Imports in Optimizely: Part 2 - Query data efficiently

One of the more time consuming parts of an import is looking up data to update. Naively, it is possible to use the PageCriteriaQueryService to quer...

Matt FitzGerald-Chamberlain | Dec 11, 2025 |

Beginner's Guide for Optimizely Backend Developers

Developing with Optimizely (formerly Episerver) requires more than just technical know‑how. It’s about respecting the editor’s perspective, ensurin...

MilosR | Dec 10, 2025