How to bulk noindex posts in WordPress

Step by step

1. Narrow the list to the posts you mean

Bulk actions work on what is ticked, so filter first. Useful combinations on the Posts screen:

• The category dropdown, to act on one category, for example an old "News" section.
• The date dropdown, to isolate one month of short announcements.
• The search box, for posts that share a word in the title.
• The All SEO dropdown, added by the plugin, to list posts by SEO score or state.

Click Filter after choosing. If you want everything of one type hidden, do not bulk edit at all: use the type-wide switch described in the last section.

2. Show enough rows

The list shows 20 posts per page by default. Open Screen Options at the top right, raise Number of items per page, and click Apply. Keep the number moderate, 100 to 200, because the Bulk Edit request carries every selected post and very large batches can time out on small hosts.

3. Tick the posts and open Bulk Edit

Tick the box in the table header to select every row on the page, then untick any post you want left alone. Choose Edit from the Bulk actions dropdown and click Apply. The Bulk Edit panel opens above the list with the selected titles on the left.

4. Set Indexing to No index

In the panel, find Indexing. It starts at — No Change —. Choose No index, leave every other field as it is, and click Update. Only the indexing value is written. Categories, authors, status and the posts' SEO titles and descriptions are untouched, because Bulk Edit changes only the fields you set.

5. Check the result

Choose No index in the All SEO dropdown and click Filter. The posts you just changed should all be listed. Then open one while logged out and view the source: the robots tag should read noindex, follow. Noindexed posts are also left out of the XML sitemap, which you can confirm by opening the post sitemap from Hydrogen SEO → Sitemap.

6. Repeat for the next page of results

Bulk Edit acts on the current page only. Move to the next page of the list and repeat until the filter is exhausted. The No index filter gives you a running count of what is done.

7. Undo it cleanly

To reverse a batch, select the same posts, open Bulk Edit and set Indexing to Default. That clears the per-post value so each post follows its post type again. Choosing Index also makes them indexable, but it stores an override on every post, which you would then have to remember if you later noindex the whole type.

When a type-wide switch is better

If every post of a type should be hidden, set Noindex for that type on Hydrogen SEO → Robots instead. One setting covers present and future entries, and nothing is stored per post. Bulk Edit is for a subset: a retired category, a year of thin updates, a batch of imported posts waiting for a rewrite. For tag and category archives, the taxonomy table on the same screen is the tool; see noindex tag and category archives.

Before you hide a batch

Noindex removes pages from search, and with them any traffic they earn. In Search Console, open Performance → Search results, switch to the Pages tab and check the candidates over the last several months. Posts with clicks deserve a rewrite or a merge into a stronger post, not removal. Posts with links from other sites are better redirected to a related page, since a noindexed page passes little on. The decision process is covered in how to prune thin content.