How to remove your webflow.io site from Google

Why your webflow.io site is in Google

Every Webflow site is published to a free staging address, yoursite.webflow.io, as well as your custom domain. If indexing of that subdomain was on when Google found a link to it (a client preview, a portfolio, a showcase post, a form tool), Google may have crawled and indexed it.

Now Google sees two copies of the same pages on two domains. Usually it picks your custom domain, but not always. You can end up with the staging URL ranking instead, or both swapping places.

Step 1: Turn off Webflow subdomain indexing

1. Open your site in Webflow and go to Site settings > SEO.
2. In the Indexing section, turn indexing of the Webflow subdomain off.
3. Click Save, then publish the site (including the webflow.io domain).

Webflow now serves a robots.txt on the webflow.io address only, telling crawlers not to crawl it. Your custom domain is not affected. This setting needs a Site plan or a paid Workspace.

Check it worked: open yoursite.webflow.io/robots.txt. You should see Disallow: /. Then open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure that one does not say Disallow: /.

Step 2: Understand why pages are still in Google

A robots.txt block stops Google from crawling. It does not remove pages Google already indexed. Google's own docs say robots.txt is not a way to keep a page out of results (Google Search Central). So after Step 1, your staging pages can stay in results for weeks.

You could also make Google drop them over time by letting it crawl a noindex tag, but Webflow's toggle uses robots.txt, and you cannot add a noindex to the webflow.io domain only. The fastest route is a removal request.

Step 3: Verify the webflow.io address in Search Console

You can only request removals for a property you own in Search Console.

1. In Google Search Console, click Add property and choose URL prefix.
2. Enter https://yoursite.webflow.io.
3. Choose the HTML tag method and copy the content value.
4. In Webflow, paste it into Site settings > SEO > Google Site Verification and publish to the webflow.io domain.
5. Click Verify in Search Console.

A Domain property for your custom domain does not cover webflow.io. It is a different domain.

Step 4: Request removal

1. In the new webflow.io property, open Indexing > Removals.
2. Click New request, choose Temporarily remove URL.
3. Enter https://yoursite.webflow.io/ and choose Remove all URLs with this prefix.
4. Submit.

Removals usually take effect within a day and last about six months. Because the subdomain is now blocked, Google should not add those pages back.

Step 5: Confirm it is gone

• Search Google for site:yoursite.webflow.io. Results should fall to zero within a few days.
• In your custom domain's Search Console property, check Performance for queries you care about. The right URLs should now get the impressions.
• Set a reminder to check site:yoursite.webflow.io again in a month.

Stop it from happening on your next site

• Turn off subdomain indexing on the first day of any paid Site plan, before you share preview links.
• Set the Global canonical tag URL (Site settings > SEO) to your custom domain, like https://www.yourdomain.com, with no trailing slash. Webflow uses it for the canonical tag on every page, so even if Google finds the staging copy, it points to the real one.
• Set your default domain in Site settings > Publishing > Production, so your sitemap lists the right URLs.

Sources, checked October 2026: Webflow: Disable search engine indexing, Webflow: canonical tags, Google: robots.txt introduction, Google: Removals tool.