Internal Search Results Indexed by Mistake

Are Internal Search Results Indexed?

Internal search results pages are generally not meant to be indexed by search engines. Indexing these pages can lead to a poor user experience and dilute the SEO value of your site. Both Shopify and WordPress (WooCommerce) provide ways to prevent internal search results from being indexed.

Shopify

In Shopify, you can use the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from indexing internal search results. Add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search

This will prevent search engines from indexing any URL that starts with /search.

WordPress (WooCommerce)

In WordPress, you can achieve the same result by editing your robots.txt file or by using an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. To manually edit the robots.txt file, add the following lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /?s=

If you are using Yoast SEO, navigate to SEO > Tools > File editor and add the same lines to your robots.txt file. This will prevent search engines from indexing any URL that contains /?s=, which is the default query parameter for search results in WordPress.