WordPress Admin Warning When Search Engines Are Blocked

WordPress has a checkbox under Settings → Reading called “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. You tick it while a site is in development and forget it at launch, and the site stays out of Google for weeks. WordPress itself only mentions it in small print in the At a Glance widget.

This snippet shows a red notice at the top of every wp-admin screen while search engines are blocked, with a link to the setting. Only administrators see it, and it disappears as soon as the box is unticked.

The snippet

<?php
/**
 * Warn administrators on every wp-admin screen while
 * "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is ticked.
 */
add_action( 'admin_notices', 'dpc_search_visibility_notice' );

function dpc_search_visibility_notice() {
	if ( '0' !== (string) get_option( 'blog_public' ) || ! current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) || is_network_admin() ) {
		return;
	}

	// Yoast SEO already shows its own warning for this.
	if ( class_exists( 'WPSEO_Admin' ) ) {
		return;
	}

	$link = sprintf(
		'<a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>',
		esc_url( admin_url( 'options-reading.php' ) ),
		esc_html__( 'Settings → Reading', 'dpc' )
	);

	printf(
		'<div class="notice notice-error dpc-search-visibility"><p><strong>%1$s</strong> %2$s</p></div>',
		esc_html__( 'Search engines are blocked on this site.', 'dpc' ),
		sprintf(
			/* translators: %s: link to Settings → Reading. */
			esc_html__( 'Untick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" in %s when the site goes live.', 'dpc' ),
			$link // Escaped above.
		)
	);
}

Add it with Scripts Organizer

In Scripts Organizer go to Code Blocks → Add New and give the block a name. Set Trigger location to Admin only, tick PHP under Script location, paste the code into the PHP editor and publish. Leave Action/Hook empty. Admin only fits: the notice only exists in wp-admin, so the code is not loaded on the front end at all.

The same code also works unchanged in a small plugin or an mu-plugin.

How it works

The setting is stored in the blog_public option: 1 allows indexing, 0 discourages it. The snippet only shows the notice for 0.
It uses the admin_notices hook and the core notice notice-error classes, so the warning appears in the usual place below the page title. The earlier version printed it on admin_footer, at the bottom of the page.
Only users with manage_options see it, because only they can change the setting, and it is skipped in the network admin.
All text goes through esc_html__() and the link through esc_url(). The earlier version printed translated strings unescaped.
When Yoast SEO is active, the snippet stays quiet, because Yoast shows its own warning for the same setting.

Customise it

Show it to editors as well: replace manage_options with edit_others_posts.
Only on the dashboard: add if ( 'dashboard' !== get_current_screen()->id ) { return; } at the top of the function.

Gotchas

Unticking the box only removes the noindex signal. Some hosts block search engines on staging domains on their own, with robots.txt or HTTP headers; check those too after launch.
On a site that should stay hidden (staging, intranet), disable the code block, otherwise the notice is always there.
A password-protected or maintenance-mode site is hidden from search engines for other reasons; this notice does not check those.

In the Scripts Organizer library Import it with one click from Scripts Organizer.