---
title: "Disabling Indexing"
description: "How to filter the URLs generated from application sources."
canonical_url: "https://nuxtseo.com/docs/sitemap/guides/filtering-urls"
last_updated: "2026-05-20T04:47:08.822Z"
---

## Introduction

When viewing your sitemap.xml for the first time, you may notice some URLs you don't want to be included.
These URLs are most likely coming from [Application Sources](/docs/sitemap/getting-started/data-sources).

If you don't want to disable these sources but want to remove these URLs you have a couple of options.

## Nuxt Robots

The easiest way to block search engines from indexing a URL is to use the [Nuxt Robots](/docs/robots/getting-started/installation) module
and simply block the URL in your robots.txt.

<module-card className="w-1/2" slug="robots">



</module-card>

Nuxt Sitemap will honour any blocked pages from being ignored in the sitemap.

## Disabling indexing with Route Rules

If you don't want a page in your sitemap because you don't want search engines to crawl it,
then you can make use of the `robots` route rule. For comprehensive route rules documentation, see [Nuxt Robots route rules](/docs/robots/guides/route-rules).

### Disabling indexing for a pattern of URLs

If you have a pattern of URLs that you want hidden from search you can use route rules.

```ts [nuxt.config.ts]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  routeRules: {
    // Don't add any /secret/** URLs to the sitemap.xml
    '/secret/**': { robots: false },
  }
})
```

### Inline route rules

If you just have some specific pages, you can use the experimental [`defineRouteRules()`](https://nuxt.com/docs/api/utils/define-route-rules), which must
be enabled.

```vue
<script setup lang="ts">
defineRouteRules({
  robots: false
})
</script>
```

## Filter URLs with include / exclude

For all other cases, you can use the `include` and `exclude` module options to filter URLs.

```ts [nuxt.config.ts]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  sitemap: {
    // exclude all URLs that start with /secret
    exclude: ['/secret/**'],
    // include all URLs that start with /public
    include: ['/public/**'],
  }
})
```

Either option supports either an array of strings, RegExp objects or a `{ regex: string }` object.

Providing strings will use the [route rules path matching](https://nuxt.com/docs/guide/concepts/rendering#hybrid-rendering) which
does not support variable path segments in front of static ones.

For example, `/foo/**` will work but `/foo/**/bar` will not. To get around this you should use regex.

### Regex Filtering

Filtering using regex is more powerful and can be used to match more complex patterns. It's recommended to pass a
`RegExp` object explicitly.

```ts [nuxt.config.ts]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  sitemap: {
    exclude: [
      // exclude /foo/**/bar using regex
      new RegExp('/foo/.*/bar')
    ],
  }
})
```