On this page · 7 sections
- 01Where does Squarespace put your sitemap?
- 02How do you connect Squarespace to Google Search Console?
- 03How do you connect Squarespace to Bing Webmaster Tools?
- 04Does Squarespace support IndexNow?
- 05What can you control in Squarespace's robots.txt and noindex settings?
- 06Which Squarespace quirks show up in Search Console?
- 07How do you check your Squarespace pages are indexed?
A page that isn't indexed (in the search engine's index, the library it answers from) can't show in Google results or in the AI answers built on them. This guide, part of our platform indexing guides, covers the sitemap, Search Console, Bing, IndexNow, the controls you do have, report quirks and a checklist, with menu paths from Squarespace's help center as of October 2026.
Where does Squarespace put your sitemap?
Squarespace puts your sitemap at /sitemap.xml on your primary domain: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, or https://sitename.squarespace.com/sitemap.xml on a built-in domain. Squarespace says it "automatically generates a list of your site's URLs and image metadata, so you don't need to create one manually" (Squarespace: View your site map).
What the same help page says, as of October 2026:
- You can't edit it. Asked "Can I edit my sitemap for SEO?", Squarespace answers "No. You can't edit the sitemap or a page's source code."
- It updates on its own. Changes "usually appear within an hour, though can take up to 24 hours."
- It needs a live, public site: no sitemap for trial sites, parking pages, or private or password-protected sites.
- Some content is left out: disabled, hidden and password-protected pages, redirected old URLs, uploaded files, and code and embed block content.
- Priority is fixed by page type: 1.00 for the homepage, 0.75 for other pages, 0.50 for blog posts.
We fetched two live Squarespace sitemaps on October 17, 2026, and the priorities matched: Squarespace's Bedford template demo (bedford-demo.squarespace.com) listed 83 URLs (one at 1.0, 65 at 0.75, 17 at 0.5), and squarespace.com listed 6,350 URLs in one file. The values don't matter much: Google says it "ignores <priority> and <changefreq> values" and uses <lastmod> only if it's "consistently and verifiably" accurate (Google Search Central: build a sitemap).
If you've connected a custom domain, make it your primary domain. Squarespace says the sitemap then switches to it, which "lets search engines know this is the correct domain to display" (Squarespace: Hiding your built-in domain).
How do you connect Squarespace to Google Search Console?
You connect Squarespace to Google Search Console from the Analytics panel: open Analytics → Search keywords, click Connect, sign in to the right Google account and click Allow (Squarespace: Verifying your site with Google Search Console). Keyword data can take up to 72 hours to appear.
Before you connect, the same page (as of October 2026) asks you to remove any site-wide or homepage password ("Passwords prevent Google from indexing your content"), publish the site if it's in trial, and wait about 48 hours after connecting a third-party domain. Skip file-upload verification too: Squarespace says "We don't support the verification method that requires you to import a .txt file" and suggests a DNS TXT record instead.
Then, in Search Console, click Sitemaps, enter your sitemap URL under Add a new sitemap and click Submit. Squarespace notes that a "Couldn't fetch" message "may appear for 24-48 hours while Google processes your sitemap." For single pages, use URL inspection → Request Indexing; our guide to the URL Inspection tool explains the results.
Search Console verifies your primary domain, so reconnect if you change it.
How do you connect Squarespace to Bing Webmaster Tools?
You add your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, then verify it with a meta tag in Squarespace's Code Injection panel or, on the Personal plan, a CNAME record (Squarespace: Verifying your site with Bing Webmaster Tools). The steps as of October 2026:
- In Bing Webmaster Tools, enter your domain in Add a site and click Add.
- Complete the About your site form, including your sitemap URL.
- Meta tag (Core, Plus, Advanced, Business, Commerce and legacy Personal plans): copy Bing's tag, paste it in the Header field of Squarespace's Code Injection panel, click Save, then Verify in Bing.
- CNAME (Personal plan): in your Squarespace domains dashboard, open the domain, click DNS → Add record, choose CNAME, paste Bing's record as the host with
verify.bing.comas the data, save, then Verify.
If Search Console is already connected, importing is quicker. Bing says imported sites "will be added and get automatically verified," and new sitemaps it finds in your Search Console account are imported too (Bing Webmaster Tools help). Our Bing Webmaster Tools guide covers the rest of the console.
Does Squarespace support IndexNow?
No. As of October 2026 Squarespace has no IndexNow setting, and searching its help center for "IndexNow" returns no articles. IndexNow (an open "this page changed" notice that Bing and other participating engines accept; Google doesn't use it) needs a key file on your own host: either "at the root directory of your website" or "in other locations within the same host" (IndexNow documentation). Squarespace gives you no way to put a file there. Uploaded files get URLs from its content delivery network, and Squarespace says those URLs "can't be changed" (Squarespace: Upload, rename and delete files).
What to do for Bing instead:
- Submit your sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, or let the Search Console import bring it across.
- Submit important URLs by hand. As of October 2026, Bing's manual URL Submission takes up to 10,000 URLs per domain per day, though Bing says URL and Content Submission "may be deprecated in the future as IndexNow adoption expands" (Bing: URL submission). Our guide to submitting URLs in Bing Webmaster Tools has the steps.
The same limit applies to FreshlyCited: its IndexNow sending needs that key file on your host, so for a Squarespace site it covers Google only. Read more about the protocol in our IndexNow explainer.
What can you control in Squarespace's robots.txt and noindex settings?
You can't edit robots.txt on Squarespace, but you can noindex single pages and use two site-wide checkboxes under Settings → Crawlers. Squarespace says "All Squarespace sites use the same robots.txt file and Squarespace users can't access or edit the file" (Squarespace: Understanding Google SEO emails and console errors).
What the default Squarespace robots.txt blocks
The default Squarespace robots.txt blocks the admin login, internal APIs, site search and filtered or alternate-format views of your content. We fetched it from Squarespace's Bedford template demo on October 17, 2026:
curl -s https://bedford-demo.squarespace.com/robots.txtTrimmed output (each ? rule also has an & twin, left out here):
# Squarespace Robots Txt
User-agent: AI2Bot
# ... 25 more AI crawler names, then AdsBot-Google,
# AdsBot-Google-Mobile and AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps
User-agent: *
Disallow: /config
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /account$
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /commerce/digital-download/
Disallow: /api/
Allow: /api/ui-extensions/
Disallow: /static/
Disallow:/*?author=*
Disallow:/*?tag=*
Disallow:/*?month=*
Disallow:/*?view=*
Disallow:/*?format=json
Disallow:/*?format=page-context
Disallow:/*?format=main-content
Disallow:/*?format=json-pretty
Disallow:/*?format=ical
Disallow:/*?reversePaginate=*
Sitemap: https://bedford-demo.squarespace.com/sitemap.xmlWhat that means for you:
- The blocks are deliberate. Squarespace says /config is your admin login, /api/ blocks its analytics tracking cookie, and the parameter rules cover pages that "organize content that exists elsewhere on your site."
- The format rules are narrower than the help page suggests. The help center lists
/*?format=*, but the live file blocks five specific values (json, page-context, main-content, json-pretty and ical), not everyformatparameter. - The AI crawler names aren't a block by default. They sit in the same group as
User-agent: *, so with the AI checkbox off they follow the same rules as every other bot. - The Search Console warning is expected. Squarespace says the message about URLs restricted by robots.txt "is completely normal." These URLs show up under the Blocked by robots.txt status, which here is intentional.
If you're used to editing the file yourself, compare how robots.txt works on WordPress.
How "Hide page from search results" works
The Hide page from search results toggle adds a noindex tag to one page and removes it from your sitemap. Open the Pages panel, hover over the page, click the gear icon, open the SEO tab and switch Hide page from search results on (Squarespace: Hiding your site from search results).
Its limits, as of October 2026:
- No homepage, no single items. Homepages and individual collection items (a blog post, a product) don't have the toggle. Hiding a collection page hides all of its items.
- Index pages need each sub-page done separately.
- Code injection is the alternative.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">in a page's header code injection works on the homepage but keeps the page in the sitemap, and isn't available on Basic or Personal plans.
Blog tag and category pages get static URLs, such as /blog/category/dogs, that appear in your sitemap (the demo's did). Hide them in the blog page's SEO tab, under Hide from search engines (Squarespace: blog tags and categories in search).
Hidden pages appear in Search Console as Excluded by 'noindex' tag, which is what you asked for. Google adds one condition: "For the noindex rule to be effective, the page or resource must not be blocked by a robots.txt file" (Google Search Central: block indexing).
What the Settings → Crawlers checkboxes do
The Settings → Crawlers panel holds two checkboxes, and each one edits robots.txt for you.
Checkbox | What Squarespace adds | Default |
|---|---|---|
Block known artificial intelligence crawlers | Asks 26 named crawlers not to crawl, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended and CCBot | Unticked |
Block Search engine crawlers | | Unticked |
Source: Squarespace's Request that AI models exclude your site and the hiding article above, as of October 2026.
Squarespace leaves the AI box unticked so as not to exclude your site "from chat answers and sources." Its list doesn't name OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, and Squarespace says "It's currently not possible to request that AI crawlers only scan specific pages." Our directory of AI crawlers explains which bot does what before you decide.
Which Squarespace quirks show up in Search Console?
Squarespace sites produce a few predictable Search Console entries that look like problems and mostly aren't. From Squarespace's guide to Google SEO emails and console errors and its built-in domain article, as of October 2026:
What you see | Why it happens on Squarespace | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Blocked by robots.txt on /search, | The shared default robots.txt | Nothing |
Alternate page with proper canonical tag on the homepage | The homepage has two URLs (Squarespace's example: example.com and example.com/home), and Squarespace asks Google to index only the first | Nothing |
Excluded by 'noindex' tag on /cart and /checkout | Squarespace adds noindex to both automatically, and you can't remove it | Nothing |
Your .squarespace.com address in Google results | The site was indexed before a custom domain became primary | Make the custom domain primary, then request re-indexing |
"Couldn't fetch" on a new sitemap | Google is still processing it | Wait 24–48 hours |
Redirect error on the http:// or non-www address | Your SSL or primary-domain redirect | Ignore if that's the cause |
The homepage row matches what we fetched: both sitemaps listed the homepage under its slug, and squarespace.com/homepage-variation returns <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.squarespace.com"/>. See what "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" means for why that's fine.
If your whole site is missing, start with why a website isn't showing up on Google. If you've just fixed a setting that hid pages, check which Squarespace pages Google has indexed rather than waiting weeks to find out.
How do you check your Squarespace pages are indexed?
You check your Squarespace pages are indexed by confirming the site is public, submitting the sitemap to Google and Bing, then inspecting the pages that matter:
- Public and published: out of trial, set to Public, no site-wide password.
- Right domain: your custom domain is primary, and its /sitemap.xml lists your key pages.
- Nothing hidden by mistake: no Hide page from search results on pages you want found, and Block Search engine crawlers unticked.
- Search Console connected through Analytics → Search keywords, with /sitemap.xml submitted.
- Bing connected by import or verification, with the sitemap submitted.
- AI checkbox chosen on purpose, not left by accident.
- Key pages requested: after publishing or updating one, inspect it and click Request Indexing. Google says "Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks" (Google Search Central: ask Google to recrawl).
- Results checked in the Page indexing report; look up unfamiliar statuses in our guide to Search Console's indexing statuses.
For more than a handful of URLs, FreshlyCited checks each one against Google ("Seen by Google" or "Invisible"), pushes only the invisible ones and re-checks on days 1, 3 and 7. If a link still isn't indexed after day 7, its credit comes back (exclusions apply, such as pages that return an error or carry noindex). Google still decides what it indexes.
Published or updated a Squarespace page? Check your Squarespace pages free: 10 free links to try, then 100 free checks a month, no card needed.
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