If you want to keep your SmugMug site hidden from search engines and create a private space for yourself or your family, SmugMug's privacy settings are perfect for you. You can control whether or not your site, folders, galleries, and photos are discoverable by search engines.
Search engine privacy
Search engines like Google automatically discover web pages unless the account owner uses settings to restrict search engine access. By default, SmugMug allows your site to be discovered by search engines like Google. However, if you want your website to remain private and hidden from search results, you can adjust your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site.
If you want to keep your SmugMug site, or parts of it, hidden from search engines, you can use your site, folder, gallery, and page privacy and visibility settings, along with your search settings, to prevent your pages from being indexed.
Setting your privacy options
You can adjust your Search Engine Visibility at both the site and gallery level. To hide your entire website from search engines:
- Step 1: Go to Account Settings > Discovery tab.
-
Step 2: Under Search Visibility, you have three options:
- Yes: Google can find and index your entire site (default setting).
- Homepage Only: Google can index your homepage, but your galleries and photos will remain hidden.
- No: Your entire site will be hidden from Google and other search engines.
Note: Changes to your site’s visibility can take weeks to be fully updated in search engines as they need to re-index your site.
SmugMug search visibility
Your SmugMug account level setting for search will also impact visitor’s ability to search your SmugMug site and our ability to display photos in your site design.
- Step 1: Go to Account Settings > Discovery tab.
-
Step 2: Under SmugMug Search Visibility, choose from:
- Yes - Discover Me: Your photos and galleries will appear in SmugMug search results.
- Find Me by Name Only: Visitors can find your site by searching your name, but your photos won’t appear in other search results.
- No - Make Me an Island: Your site won’t appear in any SmugMug searches, but visitors can still search within your own galleries.
- No - Total Lockdown: You’ll be invisible in all SmugMug searches, and visitors won’t be able to search within your site, either.
Note: The ability of our content blocks to display your selected photos does depend on your search settings. The galleries that you pull photos from must be public or unlisted with SmugMug search set to ON.
Limit Access to Specific Galleries
If you want to limit access to specific galleries without making your entire site private, you have a few options:
- Unlisted Galleries: Make galleries invisible unless visitors have the direct link.
- Password Protection: Set a password for individual galleries.
- Private Sharing: Share your galleries with specific people only by using private sharing options (available for Power plans and above).
Logged-in search
As the site owner, you can always search your photos while logged in. Visitors, however, cannot search for unlisted, password-protected, or private galleries and folders.
By adjusting your Search Visibility settings, you can keep your SmugMug site completely private from search engines. Use additional options like unlisted galleries or password protection for even more control over who can access your photos.
FYI: Changes to your Site Visibility settings can take weeks to take effect because Google, Yahoo, and other search engines need to re-index your site. Changes to your SmugMug Search Visibility settings can take hours to take effect if you have lots of photos.