iamvs

<p>Search Engine Snitch is a lightweight WordPress plugin that monitors your site’s search engine visibility settings. If you accidentally (or intentionally) block search engines from indexing your site, this plugin will send you email alerts to notify you of the change.</p>
<p><strong>Key Features:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Real-time Monitoring:</strong> Continuously monitors your site’s “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” setting</li>
<li><strong>Email Notifications:</strong> Sends alerts when search engine visibility is disabled</li>
<li><strong>Admin Bar Indicator:</strong> Shows current visibility status directly in the WordPress admin bar</li>
<li><strong>Customizable Frequency:</strong> Choose how often to check visibility (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)</li>
<li><strong>Custom Email:</strong> Set custom email addresses for notifications</li>
<li><strong>Cron-based Checks:</strong> Uses WordPress cron for scheduled checks (no performance impact)</li>
<li><strong>Lightweight:</strong> Minimal code footprint, no external dependencies</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Why Use Search Engine Snitch?</strong></p>
<p>Accidentally blocking search engines can have serious consequences for your website’s SEO and traffic. Common scenarios include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Developers disabling visibility during maintenance and forgetting to re-enable it</li>
<li>Accidental changes by multiple team members</li>
<li>Plugin conflicts that modify visibility settings</li>
<li>Testing environments affecting production settings</li>
</ul>
<p>Search Engine Snitch acts as a safety net, ensuring you’re always aware of your site’s search engine visibility status.</p>
<h3>Roadmap</h3>
<ul>
<li>Multiple email recipients</li>
<li>Visibility history log</li>
<li>Instant checks (not just scheduled)</li>
<li>Multisite support</li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p>This plugin does not:<br />
*   Collect any personal data<br />
*   Track users<br />
*   Send data to external servers<br />
*   Store information beyond plugin settings</p>
<p>All data remains on your WordPress installation. The only external communication is the email notification when triggered.</p>
<h3>License</h3>
<p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License v2 for more details.</p>


Search Engine Snitch

Monitor your WordPress site's search engine visibility and get instant alerts when search engines are blocked from indexing your content.

Joost de Valk

Yoast

Anton Timmermans

Jip Moors

Omar Reiss

Taco Verdonschot

<p>The purpose of this SEO plugin is to purge attachment URLs out of Google’s index as fast as possible. This helps sites<br />
that might have suffered from having too many thin content pages in the search index by removing them in the fastest<br />
way possible.</p>
<h3>What does this plugin do?</h3>
<p>This plugin makes all your attachment URLs return an HTTP 410 status. It then creates an XML sitemap with a recent last<br />
modified date, containing all those URLs. The XML sitemap with recent post modified date makes Google spider <em>all</em> those<br />
URLs again. The 410 status code makes sure Google takes them out of its search results in the fastest way possible.</p>
<p>With a nice trick, we also show end users the actual attachment image, so the user experience is not as poor as when<br />
they see an error page.</p>
<h3>Yoast SEO required</h3>
<p>This plugin is an extension to <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/" rel="ugc">Yoast SEO</a>. It requires it to work.</p>
<h3>How long should you run this plugin?</h3>
<p>After 6 months the attachment URLs should be gone from the search results. If you then remove the plugin, and keep<br />
Yoast SEO’s redirect setting on “Yes”, you have the best long term behavior for attachment URLs: to redirect to the<br />
actual attachment.</p>
<h3>Does Google condone this?</h3>
<p>This method has been discussed with and OK’d by Google.</p>
<h3>From within WordPress</h3>
<ol>
<li>Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’</li>
<li>Search for ‘Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge’</li>
<li>Activate Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge from your Plugins page.</li>
<li>Go to “after activation” below.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Manually</h3>
<ol>
<li>Upload the <code>yoast-seo-search-index-purge</code> folder to the <code>/wp-content/plugins/</code> directory</li>
<li>Activate the Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress</li>
<li>Go to “after activation” below.</li>
</ol>
<h3>After activation</h3>


Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge

Remove attachment URLs from Google's index as fast as possible to prevent thin content penalties.

Search Engine Snitch vs Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge