Microsoft adds setting to hide SharePoint sites from Copilot and search
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft updated its documentation on 26 June 2026 for Restricted Content Discovery. The feature is a site-level setting inside SharePoint Advanced Management that stops content from chosen SharePoint sites appearing in organisation-wide search and Microsoft 365 Copilot. The setting only affects SharePoint sites, not OneDrive. It requires both a Copilot licence and SharePoint Advanced Management. Propagation can take more than a week on sites larger than 500,000 items. It leaves existing permissions unchanged and does not block site-context search, the Microsoft 365 feed, or Purview features.
Until now, admins preparing for Copilot had two blunt choices: leave risky sites visible to everyone or spend weeks fixing permissions and ownership across hundreds of sites. The new toggle gives a third option that can be applied in minutes. The change shifts the problem from immediate exposure to long-term maintenance. Sites hidden today still need owners, lifecycle rules, and eventual cleanup, or the same permission risks will surface again when the setting is removed or bypassed.
Analysis
Treat this toggle as a temporary quarantine label, not a fix. Pick the 10-15 SharePoint sites with the oldest content or widest external sharing, apply the setting to those sites only, and set a calendar reminder to review each one within 30 days.
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "Microsoft adds setting to hide SharePoint sites from Copilot and search", Collab365 Spaces. 1 source referenced.