Q: A page on my site is showing notes that were never meant for the public. How do I clean it up?
⚠️Before you start: back up your site first. If the page is a conversion page (contact, pricing, booking), fix it today, not this week.
What this fixes:
Text like "TODO: replace this," "lorem ipsum," "[insert phone number]," "Dave, check this section," or a paragraph of developer comments is sitting on a live page. Visitors see it. Search engines index it. AI tools quote it. On a page that's supposed to earn a phone call, you end up paying for it. This is different from an unfinished legal page (fix 015); here, the problem is working notes that leaked into published copy.
Steps:
- Find every instance. In WordPress, go to Pages → All Pages and use the search box for each of these: TODO, lorem, insert, placeholder, FIXME, draft, "note to", XXX. Search Posts the same way.
- Also search from the outside. In Google, type site:yourdomain.com "lorem ipsum" and site:yourdomain.com "TODO". Google may be showing text you've already removed, andyou'll need step 7 for that.
- Open each affected page. If you use Divi or another page builder, open the builder view, not just the text editor. Notes often hide in a module that's set to display: none or in a section far below the visible content.
- Delete the note or replace it with the finished copy. If the finished copy doesn't exist yet, remove the entire section. A shorter page beats a page with a hole in it.
- Check the page's excerpt, meta description, and image alt text too. Draft text lands there, and nobody looks.
- Save, clear your cache, and load the live page in a private browser window. Read the whole page top to bottom, including the footer.
- In Google Search Console, open URL Inspection, paste the page address, and click"Request indexing" so Google refreshes its copy.
- Look at how it got there. If the page was published before it was finished, change the habit: keep unfinished pages in Draft, or password-protect them until they're done.
How to check it worked:
The live page shows no working notes; the same is true for the page's meta description and excerpt, and a site: search in Google no longer returns the leaked text (allow a few days after requesting indexing).
Tools you may need (free):
- WordPress search under Pages and Posts — built-in.
- Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console) — URL Inspection and request indexing.
- A private/incognito browser window — shows the page as a stranger sees it, without cached logins.
Common mistakes to avoid:
- Fixing the visible text and missing the hidden module underneath it.
- Forgetting the meta description, which Google shows even when the page is clean.
- Publishing a page "to see how it looks." Use Preview.
- Assuming nobody saw it. Search engines did.
When to call SEO Doctor:
- The notes keep coming back after you delete them (usually a theme or plugin template).
- Google is still showing the old text after two weeks.
- You want a second set of eyes on every page before it goes live.