Showing Member Site content in search
Requires Monocle "Professional" plan.
What member search can do
If your Squarespace site has Member Sites, that content is invisible to search by default. Monocle can change that.
Once set up, Monocle indexes your member-only pages and gives you control over who sees them in search:
- Members can search the content they paid for, just like the rest of your site.
- Logged-out visitors can see teasers of member content in their results, so they discover what a membership unlocks. Or you hide member content from them entirely. Your choice.
- AI answers can use member content when answering questions from logged-in members, if you allow it.
Member Site features require a Professional plan. Telling logged-in members and logged-out visitors apart works on sites connected through the Squarespace OAuth flow; if you installed Monocle using Code Injection only, member content excerpts are shown to all visitors once indexed.
Step 1: Give Monocle member credentials
Monocle needs a member account to crawl your protected pages (i.e. read what's in them).
- Open "Member Sites" in the Monocle interface
- Enter the email and password of a member account. These should be credentials of the kind your paying members use, not the ones you use for your Squarespace admin tools.
- Click "Set credentials"
Monocle validates the credentials right away by logging in with them, so you know immediately if something is wrong. After saving, a recrawl starts automatically. Depending on the size of your site, it can take a moment before member content shows up in results.
You can remove the credentials at any time with "Remove credentials". This also triggers a recrawl, which takes the member content out of your search index.
Step 2: Choose who sees member content
This is where member search gets interesting.
On sites connected through the Squarespace OAuth flow, Monocle automatically detects whether the person searching is a logged-in member. There is nothing to install or configure for this; Monocle verifies the visitor's Squarespace member profile in the background.
Logged-in members always see member content in their search results.
Logged-out visitors see whatever you decide under "Logged out user behavior":
- Show protected content (the default): member content appears in results for everyone. Depending on your design settings, results can include an excerpt of the protected page. This lets visitors discover what more there is to be had behind the membership, and is a natural nudge towards signing up.
- Hide protected content: member content only appears for visitors who are verified as logged-in members. Pick this if your member content should stay completely private.
Step 3: Label protected results
Search results from member pages can carry a label, so visitors understand why they might not be able to open the page.
At the bottom of the Member Sites page you can:
- change the label text (for example "Members only")
- show or hide the label entirely
Whether results also show a text excerpt is controlled by your design settings, not by the label.
Member content in AI answers
By default, AI answers never use protected content. Even when member content is visible in search results, the AI only draws on public pages, and visitors see a short notice when protected pages were excluded from an answer.
If you want members to get AI answers based on the content they paid for, enable it on the AI Answers page under "Can AI answers include protected member content?". With this enabled:
- Logged-in members get answers that can draw on member content.
- Logged-out visitors still get answers based on public content only, always.
This setting is separate from the search results setting above, so you can show member content teasers in results while keeping it out of AI answers entirely.
Protected documents and PDFs
If document search is active on your plan, PDFs and other documents behind your member area are indexed as well. Logged-in members can open them directly from the search results. For logged-out visitors, protected documents are either shown in a redacted preview or left out, so the full document never leaks to non-members.
Combining member search with search lenses
Search lenses work on member content like on any other content, which enables two useful setups:
A members-only search. Create a lens bound to your member area paths (for example /members*) and limit its results to those same paths. Members searching inside the member area then only see member content, without results from your public marketing pages mixed in.
A public search without member noise. If your member area has lots of content, you can exclude its paths in your Default lens so that visitors on the public pages get cleaner results, while a second lens inside the member area still searches everything.
Troubleshooting
Some member content is missing from results. The configured account must have access to all Member Site tiers. Monocle can only index as much as that account can see. This is the most common issue on sites with multiple membership tiers.
"Set credentials" fails. Double-check that you entered member credentials, not your Squarespace admin login. Monocle verifies the credentials by actually logging in, so a failure here means the login itself does not work.
I changed a setting but results look the same. Settings changes trigger a recrawl automatically, but recrawling takes time on larger sites. Give it a little while and check again.
A logged-in member sees the logged-out experience. This happens when the site is not connected through the Squarespace OAuth flow, or when the connection is missing the member profile permission. Reconnecting the site usually fixes it.