Your project appears in search engines because public Startnext project pages are found and indexed by search engines (e.g., Google) and, in some cases, by AI bots. This improves your project's discoverability.
Why is my project being indexed?
As soon as a project is publicly accessible, search engines can crawl the page and include it in their index.
What happens after the project is completed?
- Successful projects generally remain indexed.
- Projects that are not successful are automatically removed from the index.
Can I prevent my project from appearing in search engines?
Yes—you can disable indexing for a successful project:
- Open your project interface
- Go to Administration → Visibility and Search Engine Indexing
- Disable indexing
After that, your project will only be visible after logging in. Backers can still access the project, but it will no longer appear in public project lists.
How long will it take for Google to take over?
Removal from the search engine index (e.g., Google) can take up to 6 weeks. You can request the removal yourself to speed up the process on Google (Have personal information removed, Have content deleted, Have content updated) and Bing.
For AI systems, there are currently no reliable empirical data on how quickly changes are implemented.