Search and indexing

Clean up crawl clutter and thin archive pages

Switch off WordPress head clutter, hide empty archives, redirect date and author archives and image attachment pages, and keep your feed credit line. Every switch is off until you choose.

WordPress creates many extra pages and tags that add nothing for readers. Removing the clutter helps search engines spend their time on your real pages. Every switch below only removes something, and all are off until you choose.

Archive hygiene

Open OnlyAI SEO, Settings, Titles & social, Archive hygiene.

• Hide empty category, tag and other archives (noindex). A category with no posts is a thin page; it stays hidden while it is empty.
• Turn off date archives: visitors and search engines go to the home page with a permanent (301) redirect.
• Turn off author archives: right for a one-author site, not if readers browse by author.
• Turn off post-format archives (gallery, video, quote and so on).
• Attachment pages: send an image's own page to the post it belongs to (or to the file itself when it has no post). Stops thin pages competing with your content.

Crawl cleanup

Open OnlyAI SEO, Indexation, Crawl cleanup. Each switch removes clutter WordPress puts in every page head and feed:

• the emoji script and styles
• the short link (?p=123)
• the old blog-editor links (RSD and Windows Live Writer)
• the WordPress version tag
• the REST API and oEmbed discovery links
• the feed links in the page head
• the extra feeds (comments, categories, tags, authors, search results; answered with "gone"). Your main post feed stays.
• ?replytocom= addresses, which are sent on to the real page

The REST API itself and your feeds keep working.

The RSS credit line

In Titles & social, RSS feed, Add a credit line to every feed item is on by default: each item ends with a link back to the post and your site, so sites that copy your feed link back to you.