17: Important Squarespace Settings & How To Block AI From Scraping Your Squarespace Site
Building a website is a lot of work. Even when you use a program as awesome as Squarespace. You still have to update the copy. The colors and the fonts, trade up the images for your own. And then there are some important site settings, some of these site settings you might not be aware of. In this episode of Think Inside the Square, I want to talk about some overlooked site settings that can impact the way you work with Squarespace. One of the most recent additions to this list is the ability for us to control how AI interacts with our website. You can chose to give AI access to your Squarespace content, or toggle that option off.
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00:04 Building a website is a lot of work.
00:06 Even when you use a program as awesome as Squarespace, you still have to update the copy, the colors
00:11 and the fonts, trade up the images for your own, and then there are some important site settings.
00:16 Some of these site settings you might not be aware of.
00:19 So in this episode of Think Inside the Square,
00:21 I want to talk about some overlooked site settings that can impact the way work with Squarespace.
00:26 One of the most recent additions to this list is the ability
00:29 for us to control how AI interacts with our website.
00:36 Welcome to Think Inside the Square, a podcast full of quick tips and tricks
00:40 that will help you create a Squarespace website that you're proud of.
00:42 I'm your host, Becca Harpain, Squarespace expert and creator of Insidethesquare.co, and in this episode
00:48 you'll learn about the important settings for your Squarespace site that you need to know about.
00:52 For a transcript of this episode, along with the links
00:55 to any resources mentioned, visit Insidethesquare.co/podcast
01:00 Let's get into it.
01:01 Important site settings that every Squarespacer needs to know about.
01:04 Inside your Settings menu, you'll see a new option that says Crawlers.
01:08 This is a brand new setting available in November 2023.
01:11 Click on Crawlers and you'll actually find two options.
01:14 The first we've had for a while.
01:16 And this will stop Google from crawling your site toggle this option off.
01:20 If you don't want to be found in Google search,
01:22 you might be wondering who the heck would make a website if they didn't want it to be found.
01:26 But it happens.
01:27 This might be a portfolio for specific clients, or maybe an employee education website,
01:32 or an event like a graduation party.
01:34 There are plenty of reasons to make sure Google doesn't find your
01:37 website and you'll find the ability to toggle this off under Settings.
01:40 Crawlers.
01:41 The second setting here, Inside Crawlers, is a very hot topic right now: AI
01:47 You can stop AI language models like Chat GPT from scraping the content on your Squarespace website.
01:53 To be clear, if they already scraped your site toggling this off won't remove your content from their
02:00 system, but it will stop future bots from scraping your site, including any new content that you add.
02:06 I am not here to advocate for either side of this tech debate.
02:10 Personally, I'm leaving mine on!
02:12 I want to help train these AI language models with accurate information about Squarespace,
02:17 information that isn't full of complicated tech jargon.
02:20 I hope it picks up a thing or two about my teaching style, if I'm being totally honest.
02:24 But plenty of content creators are in a totally different situation
02:28 and they don't want their content used by AI.
02:32 Whatever you decide, I think we can both be grateful that
02:35 Squarespace has made it so easy for us to make this decision.
02:38 They're one of the first major web development platforms that
02:41 give you the ability to literally toggle off AI access.
02:45 Again, you'll find this under settings → Crawlers
02:48 → Artificial intelligence crawlers
02:50 There are three more settings that I think every Squarespacer should know about.
02:53 And the next up is cookie alerts.
02:56 If you're tracking data on your Squarespace website, which I'm almost positive that you are,
03:01 even if you don't realize it, you need to turn on your Cookie alert.
03:05 There are different rules for different countries on what needs
03:08 to go into that alert and the opinions for opting in or opting out.
03:11 So do some research on your own website.
03:13 This is not legal advice.
03:15 This is just my opinion as a Squarespacer.
03:17 Squarespace itself has built in analytics that track visitor activity,
03:21 so I definitely recommend turning this on.
03:24 Under your website settings, click on Website, then Website data, then cookies and visitor data.
03:30 Here you'll find options to customize the message,
03:33 change the opt in or opt out options, all kinds of things to customize.
03:37 Again, That's website → Then website data → Then cookies and visitor data.
03:41 Next on the list is your Social Share image.
03:44 This is a setting that a lot of people don't set on a sitewide level.
03:48 When someone shares a link to a page on your website or a blog post on your website,
03:53 you can upload a Social Share image for that individual page or post.
03:57 That image is the thumbnail that goes with the link, a custom preview of the page.
04:02 A lot of people remember to do this for these individual pages and blog posts,
04:06 but you can do it for your entire site, and I think you should.
04:09 It's good backup for any pages you haven't added a custom image to.
04:14 You'll find this under Settings → Social Sharing.
04:17 Now, a pro tip here.
04:18 After you upload a Social Share image to your site or any specific page,
04:23 you need to have Meta recrawl your URL to grab the new one.
04:27 Squarespace can't update Meta for you.
04:30 You have to let it know you have a new picture there, or else it will continue to use the old one.
04:34 To fix this, go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug Here you can resubmit any URL on your site so Meta can have the latest image.
04:45 I'll say it one more time and slowly developers Facebook.com/tools/debug
04:54 You'll find a link to this in the show Notes at Insidethesquare.co/podcast.
04:58 Okay, awesome.
04:59 The last tip I wanted to share in this episode was about AMP
05:04 MPp stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
05:08 It's an open source HTML framework that creates fast loading mobile optimized pages.
05:13 That is a very complicated way to say that AMP serves a basic version of your regular web page that is much easier to load on a mobile device.
05:23 You'll find this under Settings blog Preferences, enable amp this is a site wide setting,
05:29 so it's going to benefit every blog on your site, even if you have more than one like I do.
05:34 These Amp pages are just for blog posts, and they're used by Google Mobile Search.
05:39 So if you have a blog or you're even thinking about having one in the future toggle this on ASAP.
05:45 Again you'll find this under Settings → Blog Preferences → Enable AMP
05:49 Let's recap my friend.
05:51 Important settings I think every Squarespacer should know.
05:54 Number one: crawlers.
05:56 You have control over what Google will see and if AI can scrape your content, you'll find this setting under
06:02 Settings → Crawlers
06:04 Number two: cookie alerts.
06:06 Important for anyone and everyone who is tracking data.
06:09 You'll find this setting and all of its options under Website → Website Tools → Cookies and Visitor Data.
06:16 Setting number three: your sitewide Social Share image.
06:20 Upload this image under Settings → Social Share and when you do, don't forget to let Meta know.
06:26 A link to update Facebook and Instagram is in the show notes at insidethesquare.co/podcast
06:32 And finally, setting number four essential for anyone with a blog
06:36 turn on AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
06:41 This setting helps your page load quickly on mobile devices, which Google loves.
06:45 To turn this on, click on Settings → Blog Preferences → Enable AMP
06:50 And there you have it!
06:51 Four important settings that I think every Squarespacer needs to know about, especially that AI one.
06:57 Such a hot topic right now.
06:59 Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Inside the Square.
07:02 I hope you loved it. I have a lot more tips and tricks to share with you
07:06 about making an amazing Squarespace website that's uniquely yours.
07:09 So be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode.
07:14 And if you have a second, I would love it if you could drop me a review.
07:17 The more reviews I have, the more Squarespacers are going to find this show and I'd appreciate your support.
07:22 Thanks again for listening and most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website.
07:26 Bye for now.
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Meta social share refresh: developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
How to Stop AI from Scraping Your Squarespace Website: youtu.be/WKGNm9wMZnQ
