If you publish some posts for members and others for paying members only, search used to flatten that distinction. Every gated result carried the same Members only badge, whether a free signup could read it or not.
A Magic Pages customer wrote in after spotting it on their own site: three search results were marked members-only, but two of them were actually for paying readers only. From the reader's perspective that badge was an invitation. They clicked, and they hit the paywall.
What changed
Gated results now say which gate they sit behind:
- Members: anything a free signup can open
- Paid members: paid posts, and posts restricted to specific tiers
Tier-restricted posts count as paid, because Ghost only ever restricts to paid tiers. There's no such thing as a tier-gated post a free reader can open.
Now, a reader who hasn't paid can see how much of your archive sits behind the paywall. That's the case for subscribing, made without you writing a word of sales copy.
A reader who has paid can see what their money buys them, every time they search.
And a free subscriber stops walking into posts they can't read. They're a member, as far as they're concerned – so a badge saying "members only" was telling them to go ahead.
Who sees it
If you have the Advanced Search turned on with Members-only content active this change is active for you already. You don't need to set anything up. The search UI reads the visibility of every post and compares it to the logged in member directly in the browser.
If you index only public posts, nothing about your search changes.
