Managing Discoverability for Your Published Site

By the end of this doc, you'll be able to:

• Understand what Discoverability controls on your published site
• Turn indexing on or off for search engines and AI crawlers
• Verify your site with Google Search Console
• View, copy, and customise your site's robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and JSON-LD files
• Reset a customised file back to auto-generated

How Discoverability Works

Discoverability lets you control how search engines (like Google) and AI crawlers (like those behind ChatGPT and Claude) find, index, and understand your published site — all from Site Settings, with no code required.

A published site only helps if people can find it. Discoverability lets you control whether search engines and AI can access your site, verify ownership with Google, and let Relume handle the technical SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) files automatically.

How to Turn Indexing On or Off

The Indexing toggle controls whether search engines and AI crawlers can access your published site. Turn it off if you don't want your site appearing in search results yet.

1. Go to Site Settings, then open the Discoverability tab.
2. Under Search and AI discovery, find Indexing.
3. Toggle Indexing on to allow search engines and AI crawlers, or off to block them.

📝  When indexing is off, robots.txt blocks all crawlers (including named AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot), every page gets a noindex tag, and sitemap.xml isn't generated. Turning indexing back on reverses all three.

Verify Your Site with Google Search Console

Google site verification proves you own your site, giving you access to Google Search Console — Google's free tool for monitoring your site's search performance.

1. In Google Search Console, add your site as a property and choose the HTML tag verification method.
2. Copy the verification code Google gives you.
3. In Relume, go to Site Settings > Discoverability, and paste the code into the Google site verification ID field.
4. Click Save.
5. Return to Google Search Console and click Verify.

💡 Tip: You don't need to add the verification tag to your site yourself. Relume adds it automatically once you save your verification ID.

How to View, Copy, or Customise Your Generated Files

Every time you publish, Relume generates three files that help search engines and AI understand your site:

• robots.txt — tells crawlers which parts of your site they can access
• sitemap.xml — lists your site's pages so crawlers can find them more easily
• JSON-LD — structured data describing your business (site name, URL, logo, and description) in a format search engines and AI can read

You can view and copy any of these files, or replace them with your own custom version.

1. Go to Site Settings > Discoverability, and scroll to Generated files.
2. Find the file you want: Robots.txt file, Sitemap.xml file, or JSON-LD schema.
3. Click Copy to copy the file's contents.

screenshot

Replace a File with a Custom Version

1. Next to the file you want to change, click Auto-generated.
2. Edit the content — it starts pre-filled with the current auto-generated version, so you're not starting from a blank file.
3. Click Save.

⚠️  Once a file is set to custom, Relume never overwrites it automatically, even after you republish. If you make a mistake in a custom robots.txt file, you could accidentally block crawlers you meant to allow. Double-check your changes before saving.

💡  Only switch to custom if you need something specific, like blocking a crawler or adding a schema type the auto-generated JSON-LD doesn't cover (Product, FAQ, etc.). Otherwise, leave it on auto to stay in sync with your site.

Switch a File Back to Auto-Generated

1. Next to the custom file, click Custom.
2. Select Reset to auto.

Your file immediately shows the freshly generated version, and Relume will keep it up to date on every future publish.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why isn't my site showing up in Google search results?
Check that Indexing is on in Site Settings > Discoverability, and that you've republished since turning it on. If you haven't verified your site in Google Search Console, do that too; it helps Google recognise your site faster. Google can still take time to crawl and index it after these steps.

What happens if my custom JSON-LD has an error?
Relume validates your custom JSON-LD as valid JSON before saving and flags formatting errors immediately. It doesn't check whether the content is accurate, so you’ll need to review this yourself.

Can I set different discoverability settings for individual pages?
Discoverability settings apply site-wide. To hide a specific page from search engines, use the noindex option in that page's Page Settings instead.

Do I need to upload these files anywhere on my own site?
No. Relume generates and hosts robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and your JSON-LD at your site's root when you publish.

Need More Help?

If you have any questions or run into anything, reach out to our support team at support@relume.io — we're happy to help.

Related Articles

• Publishing Your Site
• Setting Up a Custom Domain
• Page-Level SEO Settings
• Getting Started with Google Search Console