By default, WordPress Search feature displays published posts and published pages in search results. Often when users are looking for something in a blog, it is most likely a post rather than a page. In this article, we will show you how to make your search more relevant and less crowded by excluding pages from WordPress search results.
First, you add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.
//Exclude pages from WordPress Search
if (!is_admin()) {
function wpb_search_filter($query) {
if ($query->is_search) {
$query->set('post_type', 'post');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','wpb_search_filter');
}
Explanation: This code first checks that the search is not originating from the WordPress admin pages. If it is not, then it searches for posts by setting the post_type parameter.
You can also make it do the opposite by setting the post_type to pages, so it only return pages in the search results.
We hope this article helped you learn how to exclude pages from WordPress search results. You may also want to see our list of best WordPress search plugins to improve your site search.
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Hi,
Thanks for the code, I’m just having one massive issue lol. my header and my footer disappear when I do a search.
any help is much appreciated it
Thanks
You would want to check with your theme’s support as that sounds like a styling decision or error.
Hello !
I have also images displaying, is there a possibility to provide this ? I can only find solutions to provide images to appear in google, but I don’t want to loose gg images traffic, just make my website user friendly.
Thank you for your help !
Using this solution should normally remove images from the search results as well
just what I needed, at the right time
thanks
Glad our guide could help
Hey there i have a question for you
in my search results i only want the files stored in the media library to be showen
eample if i write the query “15145” only one file or image in the media library with the exact bame “15145” should appear as a result
thanks in advence
Thanks. This worked for me. I wanted to exclude gallery appears in search results and this code does exactly what I need. Thanks
This is really basic. It would be nice to see how to exclude only particular page templates, or blog categories.
You are true life savers. always.
Hello guys,
This code is to indicate that only the posts in the search results of the site should be shown, and hide the pages.
But how do I hide only a few pages?
And this code should be inserted into the function.php of the Son Theme to not be lost when I update the WP?
I thank you.
Can someone give a concise explanation of how to use the if(!is_admin()){ } to get this work?
I can get it to exclude pages in search, but then as an admin, the page search and media library search stop working. It seems if I put the given code inside if(!is_admin()){ } that it would make the code only work for admins…I want the code to exclude pages for regular users and to do FULL search if I’m logged in as admin.
Hello team WPBeginner
I am facing a new problem
when I have tested crawled pages on Google by writing
site:example.com
Then it showing pages & posts properly but also showing pagination links
example.com/page/2/
Like this
So how can I avoid this?
Please help me.
This worked great. However, I was then unable to search my media library. Is there a way around this so that I could still search that?
Yup, its easy! Just put the given code inside if(!is_admin()){ }
Thanks! :)!
Wondering if there’s a way to target different search forms with this technique. I’d like the main website search form to target pages only; and the blog search form to target posts only.
I’d love to know how to do this too
This one works better.
The fix does not affect custom post types and does not break the default wp’s flow.
add_filter(‘register_post_type_args’, function($args, $post_type) {
if (!is_admin() && $post_type == ‘page’) {
$args[‘exclude_from_search’] = true;
}
return $args;
}, 10, 2);
I have some pages that are password protected (via main WP option to password protect a page) but they are still showing up in WP search with the excerpts. My understanding is that by default, the excerpts should not appear, you should see “There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.” I can use the Simply Exclude plugin but I’m wondering why the excerpts are showing up in the first place and I’d rather not add another plugin if I don’t have to.
Thank you very much sir.. this post really help me.. you rock man .. !!
Thank you very much. You guys did the trick. I was looking for this and couldn’t find it anywhere else.
Nice job, guys.
Add this to your theme’s functions.php for displaying only products using wordpress search.
function SearchFilter($query) {
if ($query->is_search) {
$query->set(‘post_type’, ‘product’);
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,’SearchFilter’);
Hello!
I really hope you can help me out; does this works for showing ‘ products’ only in search results? I need to exclude ALL ‘ pages’ since I only want to show my products in store.
Thanks!
It would be not the best option to do that. You would probably want to use a search plugin like SearchWP.
Actually I found a simple sollution elsewhere. Just put this code in your functions.php (of child theme):
// Set search results to display only ‘product’ post type results
if ( !is_admin() ) {
function searchfilter($query) {
if ($query->is_search && !is_admin() ) {
$query->set(‘post_type’,array(‘product’));
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,’searchfilter’);
}
When someone just hits SEARCH with the criteria being ‘blank’, ALL pages show up in the results. How can I have NO results show in this situation?
Noah, if you are saying about search result, you can validate the search form using javascript. So that people are forced to key in the words before do the searches.
Thanks bro.
Thanks for the Code!
One remark: I think you should make it more clear in the article, that this snippet is responsible for all searches especially in the admin area.
So also the tiny seachfields in pages, the search for a page to link to in the editor and the dropdown in the media part won’t work.
I just realized this some weeks later, when i first wondered why the enhance media library plugin (which adds categories to media files) won’t work.
I stumbled upon your note to add “if(!is_admin()) ” in the comments just too late, so maybe better put it directly in the article.
Nevertheless: Every small problem and bug just enhances my knowledge of WordPress
How would I add code to the following so that it would exclude an optin-form from displaying on pages? I only want it to display on posts. Thanks.
//////
Glad to hear. You are welcome.
Can you tell us what error you saw when you were unable to access your site? This will help us figure out exactly what went wrong.
Most of the time users forget to close an open tag. Missing characters in the PHP code can also break the script resulting in an error.
Meanwhile, please checkout our “guide on pasting snippets in WordPress.
I’ve since fixed the problem and you’re exactly right. In my ‘newness’ to all this I just entered the code literally at the end of the file — after the ‘?>’ –instead of before and that’s what ‘broke’ things! Once I entered it before the closing tags it all worked out. Thanks again for your help!
Hi,
I’m really new to all of this so I have to ask: does it matter where in my theme’s functions.php file that I paste this code? In the past when I’ve had to enter code into this file, it’s had to go at a certain spot. Thanks!
You can place the code any where but to make sure that you do not break anything it is recommended to add your code at the bottom of your functions.php file.
Thank you so much!
Hi again,
So I entered the code at the end of my functions.php file and something went wrong because after that I was unable to log into my WP dashboard.
So I went into the File Manager of my hosting acct and removed the code I’d entered but even after that I still couldn’t log into my dashboard.
The only way I was able to get back into my dashboard was to replace the existing functions.php file with the original one.
Do you have any idea why this would have happened?
Thank you so much for the article and some comments with codes that helped me a lot!
Worked perfectly, Thanks alot
Work Fine !
Thanks bro! Your code helped me a lot.
This worked much better than passing a hidden field (which is what I’ve been doing).
This worked great, thanks! How can I include WordPress Native BBPress forum topics in the search results?
Thanks,
L
You can try bbpress search plugin.
Hi! I would like to ask how do i exclude the specified pages i wanted to excluded from searches? And how do i know what is the ID of the page? Can someone tell a solution? I wanted to excluded some pages which are useless to visitors.
Thank you!
function jp_search_filter( $query ) {
if ( $query->is_search && $query->is_main_query() ) {
$query->set( ‘post__not_in’, array( 10,11,20,105 ) );
}
}
add_filter( ‘pre_get_posts’, ‘jp_search_filter’ );
works for me. thank you!
So to exclude posts, do I add:
function SearchFilter($query) {
if ($query->is_search) {
$query->set(‘post_type’, ‘pages’);
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_pages’,’SearchFilter’);
You are a real life saver. I tried codes from WordPress forum but didn’t work out. Yours is working for me!
Code works on site search but it also stops “search media” within the media admin section from working as well which is a big issue.
You can add if(!is_admin()) conditional
So how would I go about excluding a specific page, meaning page ID?
Use the Simply Exclude plugin that we mentioned in the article.
Hi! Your code is helpful. But my excerpt code that limit the words from showing from my search, index and categories page not working. I have limited it as 20 words, but now the limitation is less than that. How to fix it?
Thanks!
Can you please tell me how to exclude only some specific pages from the search? For example I wan to exclude the page “bio” from the search but not the resume, awards pages.
I want the posts and pages in search except the bio page.
Thanks
Waqas
Use the comment by StylishandTrendy’s method to do your way. It should work.
I was able to exclude categories too based on your search filter code
function SearchFilter($query){
if ($query->is_search)
{ $query->set(‘cat’,’8,15′);
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,’SearchFilter’);
Well just wanted to say thank you for this… wonderful article
Can you alter this function to exclude specific pages/posts from search? Ive been searching for this functionality and havent found anything.
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-exclude-pages-from-wordpress-search-results/
Perfect! I was expecting it to be a bit more complex than that. Thanks a ton!
Thank you so much. This was super helpful, fixing my problem with the speed of a cut and a paste (and a test)..
Success in all your ways!
Michael.
Well, that’s almost perfect. I searched and found that many site’s offering us to hardcode the category ids to search id but this is cool. One question, i have to do the pagination myself so when i add this filter i won’t get offset issues .. right?
No, you should not have offset issues.
You need to modify this sentence to say “page” instead of “pages”:
You can also make it do the opposite by setting the post_type to pages, so it only return pages in the search result.
Hi
may I put your tutorials in my blog with a link to wpbeginner.com? my blog is in Farsi and I think many persian users need these tips.
thanks a lot
No you may not translate any of our tutorials entirely. You may write a summary and then link to our site.
This hack excludes not only pages from search results, but also other custom post types. So if we have many custom post types in our WP site, we can put them in the statement like this:
$query->set(‘post_type’, array(‘post’, ‘custom-post-type’));
Thanks Rilwis, just what i needed!