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Search Exclude

By quadlayers

Site Administration & Utilities / URL Redirects & 301 Management

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Search Exclude Review - In-Depth Analysis

Easily hide specific posts or pages from WordPress search results. Supports bulk editing.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.25/10

User Rating

4.8/5 (based on 217+ reviews)

Active Installations

50,000+

Update Frequency

Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5.6 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

This plugin allows you to exclude any page, post, or content from appearing in the WordPress search results. You can do this by simply checking off the corresponding checkbox on the post or page edit screen.

It also supports quick and bulk editing, making it easy to manage multiple items at once. Additionally, the plugin settings page provides a list of all the items that are currently hidden from search results.

Comparing to Alternatives

Search Exclude stands alone in its category with no close direct alternatives available, making it a unique solution for excluding content from search results.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly effective at excluding specific pages or posts from search results.
Easy to install and implement with minimal setup required.
Allows bulk actions to hide multiple pages or posts at once.
Helps improve user search experience by filtering out less relevant content.
No guesswork or troubleshooting needed; works reliably out of the box.

Weaknesses

No direct alternatives to compare feature sets.
Limited to excluding content from search; lacks broader search customization features.
No pro version available for advanced functionality.
Security vulnerabilities have been reported and fixed in past versions.

User Sentiment Analysis

With a strong 4.8 out of 5 rating from 217 users, the plugin is overwhelmingly praised for its ease of use and effectiveness, though a small minority report issues.

Positive highlights

'Very Useful & Powerful' - mrebel
'I didn’t know how desperately I needed this plugin' - paarseolifant
'Great plugin' - paulroberts
'Well, that was easy' - unleashedfinancial
'Perfect' - Michael Kavanagh

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Past security vulnerabilities affecting authorization and settings modification.
No premium support or advanced features due to lack of pro version.
Limited scope focused solely on excluding content from search results.

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Website owners and administrators who want a simple, reliable way to exclude specific pages or posts from their site's search results without complex configuration.

Not ideal for

Users seeking advanced search customization features or those concerned about past security issues may want to consider alternative solutions or wait for further security improvements.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers full functionality to exclude content from search results with easy setup and bulk actions.

Final Verdict

Search Exclude is a highly effective and user-friendly plugin that excels at excluding unwanted content from search results, backed by overwhelmingly positive user feedback. Its simplicity and reliability make it a valuable tool for many WordPress site owners.

However, the plugin has had several security vulnerabilities in the past, which have been addressed in updates, and it lacks a pro version for advanced features. Users should weigh these factors against their needs and consider the absence of direct alternatives when choosing this plugin.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Search Exclude plugin.

Exclude Page

Exclude Post

Search Exclude

Screenshots

FAQ

No, it does not affect crawling and indexing by search engines.
The ONLY thing it does is hiding selected post/pages from your site search page. Not altering SEO indexing.

If you want posts/pages to be hidden from search engines you may add the following snippet to your functions.php:

function add_meta_for_search_excluded() {     global $post;     if (false !== array_search($post->ID, get_option('sep_exclude', array()))) {         echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />', "\n";     } } add_action('wp_head', 'add_meta_for_search_excluded');

Note: already indexed pages will remain indexed for quite a while. In order to remove them from Google index, you may use Google Search Console (or similar tool for other engines).

Yes.
There is an action searchexclude_hide_from_search.
You can pass any post/page/custom_post ids as an array in the first parameter.
The second parameter specifies state of visibility in search. Pass true if you want to hide posts/pages,
or false – if you want show them in the search results.

Example:
Let’s say you want “Exclude from Search Results” checkbox to be checked off by default
for newly created posts, but not pages. In this case you can add following code
to your theme’s function.php:

add_filter('default_content', 'exclude_new_post_by_default', 10, 2); function exclude_new_post_by_default($content, $post) {     if ('post' === $post->post_type) {         do_action('searchexclude_hide_from_search', array($post->ID), true);     } }

Also there is a filter searchexclude_filter_search.
With this filter you can turn on/off search filtering dynamically.
Parameters:
$exclude – current search filtering state (specifies whether to filter search or not)
$query – current WP_Query object

By returning true or false you can turn search filtering respectively.

Example:
Let’s say you need to disable search filtering if searching by specific post_type.
In this case you could add following code to you functions.php:

add_filter('searchexclude_filter_search', 'filterForProducts', 10, 2); function filterForProducts($exclude, $query) {     return $exclude && 'product' !== $query->get('post_type'); }