Will my protected document libraries be hidden from search engines?

If you lock part or all of a hosted document library, you will want to be sure the private content stays out of Google and other search engines. This guide explains how that works.

Access control is available on the Advanced plan. Whenever you protect a library, category, or document from your dashboard, hosted Document Library Pro keeps that content hidden from search engines automatically.

How protected content is hidden

Protected content is marked so that search engines are told not to index it or follow its links. This applies to protected libraries, categories, and individual documents, and it happens without any extra setup on your part. Protected content is also kept out of your site’s sitemap.

Things to keep in mind

This handles the vast majority of cases, but we cannot promise protected content will never show up in results. A few search engines ignore these instructions, and if a page was already indexed before you protected it, it may linger in results until the search engine recrawls and drops it.

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