When will my site be visible to the public and search engines?

Your site becomes publicly visible in two stages.

1. First, HWP completes a technical launch, which includes applying your official domain and making the site accessible using that domain. At this stage, your site visibility is set to private (usually set to Harvard Community). Only site administrators and editors can view the site. While the site visibility is set to Harvard Community the site is not yet discoverable by search engines.
2. After this step, the site owner can update the site’s visibility settings to allow indexing by setting the site visibility to Public. Search engines can then begin to discover and surface your site in search results.