Your project appears in search engines because public Startnext project pages are found and indexed by search engines (such as Google) and, in some cases, by AI bots. This improves your project's visibility.
Why is my project being indexed?
Once 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:
- 1Open your project interface
- 2Go to Administration → Visibility and Search Engine Indexing
- 3Disable 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 pick this up?
Removal from search engine indexes (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.
There is currently no reliable data on how quickly AI systems adapt to changes.