On my site, I want some pages to not be queriable by the search form (so they don't appear when I've got something like www.ex/?s=banana)

Is there a way to "Remove" pages from the search results page (without just blindly do a condition of if is_page(id), display:none)

On my site, I want some pages to not be queriable by the search form (so they don't appear when I've got something like www.ex/?s=banana)

Is there a way to "Remove" pages from the search results page (without just blindly do a condition of if is_page(id), display:none)

• search

2 Answers 2

In WP_Query() there is a 'post__not_in' argument where you can exclude specific post ID's.

You would create a new WP_Query inside of your search.php and use the current $query_args, then add on your 'post__not_in'.

If you wanted to make it more dynamic, you could also build in some post meta where you could do a meta query and exclude all that have "exclude" checked. (look up 'register_meta_box_cb' in register_post_type ).

For example,

add_action('pre_get_posts','wpse67626_exclude_posts_from_search');
function wpse67626_exclude_posts_from_search( $query ){

    if( $query->is_main_query() && is_search() ){
         //Exclude posts by ID
         $post_ids = array(7,19,21);
         $query->set('post__not_in', $post_ids);
    }

}

To exclude all pages from search results (i.e. without having to manually supply page IDs), here's an improved version of @EricHolmes's function:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'wpse67626_exclude_pages_from_search' );
function wpse67626_exclude_pages_from_search( $query ) {

    // Manually supply Post/Page IDs to exclude from search results
    // $exclude_page_ids = array( 7, 19, 21 );

    // Or just get all page IDs
    $exclude_page_ids = get_all_page_ids();

    if (
        !$query->is_admin &&
        $query->is_search &&
        $query->is_main_query() &&
        !empty( $exclude_page_ids ) 
    ) {

        $query->set( 'post__not_in', $exclude_page_ids );

    }
}

More info:

• https://developer.wordpress/reference/hooks/pre_get_posts/
• https://developer.wordpress/reference/functions/get_all_page_ids/
• https://developer.wordpress/reference/classes/wp_query/#post-page-parameters

(ALTERNATIVE) Although, given what you are doing, you could just set exclude_from_search for the page post type to true, which to me seems to be the best way to exclude a post type from search. See @prettyboymp's answer for that.

More info:

• https://developer.wordpress/reference/functions/register_post_type/
• https://codex.wordpress/Function_Reference/register_post_type