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Discourage search engines from indexing this site

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    What is the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option?

    The “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” option is a WordPress feature found under Settings > Reading.

    When activated, it sends a note to search engines to ignore the site; so to not index any of your pages within their search results. It’s important to note though that search engines do not need to comply, but they generally do.

    Should you use this feature?

    This is mainly used on websites that are in development, staging websites, or are private and are not meant for public viewing. Use it in those cases.

    Otherwise, if you want traffic from search engines like Google and Bing, no, you definitely shouldn’t use this feature. Leave it disabled (unchecked).