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Hide Products from SEO (Google Search) & Store Search using WLM

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Feature: Hide Products from Internal Search & Google Search Engine
What it does: Prevents selected products from showing up in external search engines (like Google) and your store’s built-in search.

Overview

Wholesale Lock Manager (WLM) now includes a visibility control that helps you keep specific products out of search results—both:

  1. External search engines (e.g., Google)
  2. Your storefront’s built-in search

This is useful when you want products to remain in your catalog/collection (and accessible via direct link or internal workflows), but not discoverable via search.

Steps to hide product(s) from SEO & internal store search:

  1. Open Wholesale Lock Manager (WLM) in your admin > Click on Create Lock
  2. Follow this guide to create a product lock and select a product you want to hide
  3. In the same window, navigate to your Lock products settings
  4. Click on the "Hide from search" checkbox option (as shown in the image above)

    You have two choices: 
     
    1. Hide selected products from storefront search results - When enabled, the selected products won’t appear in storefront search results.
    2. Hide selected products from SEO and storefront search - When enabled, the selected products will be hidden across your storefront and from search engines (including Google). Search engine updates may take time to reflect.
  5. Choose your desired option and click Save.

That’s it — the product is now marked as SEO hidden and removed from your built-in store search

Important note about indexing speed (Google, etc.)

Wholesale Lock Manager: B2B app applies the “SEO hidden” metafield immediately, but search engines control how fast results update.

It can take several days or even a few weeks for Google (and other search engines) to recrawl your site and remove a product from their results.

This timing depends on the search engine and cannot be forced instantly.

How it works

When you enable this setting for a product, WLM applies a product metafield called “SEO hidden”.

That metafield triggers two outcomes:

  • Search engine de-indexing signals: The product is marked in a way that signals search engines to remove or avoid indexing the product page.
  • Storefront privacy (built-in search): The product is automatically hidden from your store’s built-in search results.

What this feature does (and does not do)

✅ This feature is for discoverability control

  • Hides from Google/external search (over time)
  • Hides from your store’s built-in search (immediately after save)

❌ This feature is not an ‘access‘ lock by itself
If you want to restrict who can view or buy the product (e.g., only wholesale customers), use Product Locks access rules (login required, customer tags, lock conditions, etc.). Learn more about locks here>

Think of this new toggle as: “hide from search,” not “block access.”

FAQs

  1. Will the product disappear immediately from Google?
    No. The setting is applied immediately in WLM, but Google may take days/weeks to update results.
  2. Will it hide the product from my storefront search right away?
    It will be removed from your built-in storefront search after you save the change
  3. Does this affect third-party search apps?
    This setting targets your store’s built-in search. Some third-party search apps may not automatically respect the same logic unless they’re configured to.
  4. Can I turn it off later?
    Yes. Toggle Hide selected products from SEO and storefront search OFF, Save, and the product can become searchable again (search engines may still take time to re-index).