During a previous version of IPB, I think it was during the 3.x series versions, I was able to exclude certain forums from visitors and guests. It was a way to draw more interest in visitors to register having member's only forums. I've tried looking under "Search" and "Search Engine Optimization" and I've even tried looking under the forums themselves but I've been able to find anything to exclude certain forums from the search results. I'm hoping that someone here has a solution to this or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places in ACP.

It’s just part of each forum’s access permissions. 

@opentype, thanks for your help but I think I mis-communicated my problem. I know how to disable viewing the forum from usergroups. What I'm trying to do is hide these certain forums from appearing in the search results and when people click on "view new content" or "new content". Posting in these forums appears and I want to display new postings or new content in these forums from appearing. Most of my members just go straight to the "view new content" link instead of actually viewing the forum.

The answer still applies. What isn’t accessible to guests for example, also won’t show up in feeds or search results. Would be weird if it did. 

Well, the solution you offered didn't really answer my inquiry. But, thanks for the follow up answer, it deals with part of the problem, at any rate. I've been looking for a way to disappear the topics in certain forums from displaying in the search results. I'm sure someone will create a solution for it. Thanks for the reply.

 

7 hours ago, Rheddy said:

Well, the solution you offered didn't really answer my inquiry.

Well, that was you inquiry:

Quote

exclude certain forums from visitors and guests

Forum permission do that and that also affects search results and view new content. 
Once again: You don’t have to manually remove the forums if the users aren’t allowed to read them in the first place. 

@opentype is correct - maybe his response isn't clear?

What he's saying (again, which is accurate) is that if you edit a forum and remove permissions for guests (or any other group) to be able to see/read those forums, then topics and posts from those forums will not show up in streams and search results.