Search engine visibility for portals

Automatic search engine hiding

Starting from version 5.2.1, Client Portal automatically hides private portals from search engines like Google and Bing. You don't need to take any action.

When you create a portal and keep it private (the default setting), the plugin adds this meta tag to the page:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

This tells search engines not to index the page or follow links on it.

What gets hidden automatically

The automatic noindex tag is added to:

• Private portal pages – Any portal where "Public Portal" is set to "No"

• Content pages – Pages created within private portals

• Login page – The /client-portal-login page

Checking if your portals are hidden

To verify that your private portals are hidden from search engines:

1. Open a private browser window (incognito/private mode)

2. Navigate to one of your portal pages

3. Right-click and select "View Page Source"

4. Search for "robots" – you should see the meta tag in the <head> section

You can also use Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool to check if a page is marked as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag".

Common issues and solutions

Portals appearing in search results

If your portals are showing up in search results, check these potential causes:

• Portal is set to public – Go to the portal editor and make sure "Public Portal" is set to "No" in the Client Portal Settings sidebar

• SEO plugin is overriding settings – Some SEO plugins force pages to be indexed. Check your SEO plugin's settings and exclude the Client Portal post types (leco_client and leco_content_page) from being indexed

• Pages were already indexed – If portals were indexed before version 5.2.1, you may need to wait for search engines to re-crawl and remove them, or manually request removal through Google's removal tool

Hiding the portal archive page

The /clients archive page doesn't get the automatic noindex tag. To hide it, add this line to your robots.txt file:

Disallow: /clients/

You can access your robots.txt file through FTP, cPanel File Manager, or your SEO plugin's robots.txt editor.

For older versions (5.2.0 and earlier)

If you're using Client Portal version 5.2.0 or earlier, portals are still protected by login requirements, but they may appear in search results (though the content won't be accessible).

To hide them completely:

1. Add this to your robots.txt file: Disallow: /client/*

2. Or use an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to set Client Portal post types to "noindex"