In late October, Discord made a spooky announcement: It would begin allowing search engines to index its discoverable servers. In plain speak, conversations on these public servers will become findable by Google and other search providers.
Predictably, this reveal stoked fears about privacy on Discord. With all the furor over age verification, some people have interpreted the move as a further erosion of privacy.
But after reading Discord’s blog post more closely, I’m not worried… yet. Discoverable servers are meant to be found publicly, after all, and there’s potential good in exposing what’s being said on them. Forums have become less popular, and Reddit is continuing to turn away from search-driven traffic.
(Don’t know about you, but if someone figures out an obscure fix for a problem with a printer, I want to find it when I Google for a solution. I’m already going to be grumpy as heck.)
More importantly, Discord is allowing both users and server owners to opt out of the indexing. Assuming everything works as advertised, this approach is a surprisingly good balance between public discovery and privacy.
Here’s how to tweak those settings.
How to turn off search indexing for discoverable Discord servers
Discord
If you’re the owner of a discoverable server, open Server Settings. Near the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu, find the section with the community settings. Choose Web Presence.
(If you don’t see this option, your server is likely set as a private or community server. You can check the status in Community Overview.)
Within Web Presence, you have two choices for search engine indexing. You can choose to be discoverable through channel summaries or channel messages (or both). Summaries advertise broadly what you talk about, while messages show exactly what you talk about.
These settings only apply to public channels within the server—that is, channels that can be seen by all server members.
Discord will allow indexing of Channel Summaries starting November 16, 2026. Channel Messages will start being indexed sometime in “mid-December.”
How to opt out of search indexing as a user
Discord
Members of discoverable servers can disallow the indexing of their messages. (That is, the channel might get indexed, but you can withhold permission for your messages to be included in that mix.)
To opt out, go to your user settings. Near the top of the left-hand nav bar, select Data & Privacy, then choose How Discord Uses My Data. By default, Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages is turned on. Flip the toggle to prevent your messages from showing.
Also a good idea: Clean up your permissions for profile and activity sharing. Profile sharing can be changed in this same Data & Privacy section. Activity Sharing is managed through Activity Privacy, toward the bottom of the left nav bar (under Games & Apps).
