Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Website Optimization
    5. Sub-Domain Google Search Nested under main Domain?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Sub-Domain Google Search Nested under main Domain?

    Local Website Optimization
    3
    4
    1632
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • dogtopiamichigan
      dogtopiamichigan last edited by

      Hello,

      I have a strange issue that I have not come across before:My subdomain is: michigan.dogdaycare.com.

      Some of the Keyword searches show our subdomain being nested under the main domain for Google searches instead of being indexed individually.

      Example search term: Dogtopia Bloomfield

      https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+bloomfield

      -This will show two subdomain links nested under the main domain

      Example search term: Dogtopia Birmingham

      https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+birmingham

      -This shows the subdomain showing correctly in searches and not nested.

      Any idea as to how to fix this?

      Thanks in advance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • dogtopiamichigan
        dogtopiamichigan @Netrepid last edited by

        Thanks for your advice and tips!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Netrepid
          Netrepid last edited by

          I'm wondering if you can correct this with link building. Your domain has some decent authority, so it's probably a trust of the primary domain over the subdomain in this case.

          In contrast, I have a subdomain that generated quite a bit of editorial coverage that stands on its own in SERPs, and I believe that is because of the link profile to it.

          I'll leave you with a couple ideas...

          1. Get rid of the button link on the michigan.dogdaycare.com page to /bloomington/ and instead, link them the other way (ie corporate page to business listing on subdomain).
          2. Also, on the corporate domain, if you do any internal linking, switch them to the Michigan subdomain URL instead of /bloomfield/
          3. Do something to generate some inbound links to your subdomain listing, and do it without including links to anywhere on the main domain. Honestly, something as simple as Moz Local, a press release that gets picked up by some local publications, and maybe some links to that subdomain URL from some doggy daycare directories will help that, IMO.
          4. Moving forward, show no link love to the corporate domain page.
          dogtopiamichigan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RyanPurkey
            RyanPurkey last edited by

            Within Webmaster Tools you could possibly exclude the subdomain pages from being listed as site links, but Google has stated they're trying to get better at associating when subdomains are similar to subfolders on a site. Rand recently discussed that aspect of it here: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday.  Cheers!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Andreea-M

              Google-selected canonical: the homepage?

              Hi guys,
              I checked the product pages on our website with Google Search Console (URL Inspection), and the majority appear as
              "URL is not on Google"
              Coverage: "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical", and 
              Google-selected canonical: the homepage of the website (for all product pages) Our product pages are not identical to the homepage (content-wise), besides the top menu, header and footer, so how could I use the canonical tag in this case? I wouldn't want that the product pages to be seen as duplicates of the homepage. Thanks!

              Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
              0
            • Kevin_P

              Google for Jobs: how to deal with third-party sites that appear instead of your own?

              We have shared our company's job postings on several third-party websites, including The Muse, as well as putting the job postings on our own website. Our site and The Muse have about the same schema markup except for these differences: The Muse...
              • Lists Experience Requirements
              • Uses HTML in the description with tags and other markup (our website just has plain text)
              • Has a Name in JobPosting
              • URL is specific to the position (our website's URL just goes to the homepage)
              • Has a logo URL for Organization When you type the exact job posting's title into Google, The Muse posting shows up in Google for Jobs--not our website's duplicate copy. The only way to see our website's job posting is to type in the exact job title plus "site:http://www.oursite.com". What is a good approach for getting our website's posting to be the priority in Google for Jobs? Do we need to remove postings from third-party sites? Structure them differently? Do organic factors affect which version of the job posting is shown, and if so, can I assume that our site will face challenges outranking a big third-party site?

              Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P
              1
            • PavelGro92

              How to correctly move subdomain to subfolder (google webmaster)?

              Hello, This is my first post in here 🙂 I just wondered what is the correct way to move a subdomain to subfolder? I've moved it, re-done sitemap, so that main website would include a subfolder, as they are part of one big website now (it was something like a blog on a subdomain). Subdomain now does correct 301 redirects. Submitted new sitemap to google, asked google to re-fetch the whole domain (thus subfolder should be re-fetched too, as it's part of main nav). The areas i'm in doubt: I can tell google that the domain got moved, however it is moved to the one that is already approved in the same account, but is in a subfolder, so should i do this? Or should i simply somehow erase it on webmaster? The blog was launched about a month ago, and it isn't perfectly optimized yet, it wasn't on google SERPs pretty much at all, excluding googling it straightly, and there are pretty much 0 traffic from google, almost all of it is either direct either referral, mostly social, Thanks, Pavel

              Local Website Optimization | | PavelGro92
              0
            • LittleDog

              Should I open a new domain and website for a new location under one company?

              Hi my name is Gina and I wanted to ask for some advice. I'm thinking opening a diff location and was thinking if its a good idea to open up a new domain and new website? And why that may be a good idea and why or a bad idea and why?

              Local Website Optimization | | LittleDog
              0
            • Treefrog_SEO

              Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?

              Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with. We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc. I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter. Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!

              Local Website Optimization | | Treefrog_SEO
              0
            • ChristinaRadisic

              Virtual Offices & Google Search

              United Kingdom We have a client who works from home and wants a virtual office so his clients do not know where he lives. Can a virtual office address be used on his business website pages & contact pages, in title tags and descriptions as well as Google places. The virtual office is manned at all times and phone calls will be directed to the client, the virtual office company say effectively it is a registered business address. Look forward to any helpful responses.

              Local Website Optimization | | ChristinaRadisic
              0
            • Kingalan1

              SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?

              Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan

              Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan1
              0
            • LincolnSmith

              International Site Geolocation Redirection (best way to redirect and allow Google bots to index sites)

              I have a client that has an international website. The website currently has IP detection and redirects you to the subdomain for your country. They have currently only launched the Australian website and are not yet open to the rest of the world: https://au.domain.com/ Google is not indexing the Australian website or pages, instead I believe that the bots are being blocked by the IP redirection every time they try to visit one of the Australian pages. Therefore only the US 'coming soon' page is being properly indexed. So, I would like to know the best way to place a geolocation redirection without creating a splash page to select location? User friendliness is most important (so we don't want cookies etc). I have seen this great Whiteboard Friday video on Where to Host and How to Target, which makes sense, but what it doesn't tell me is exactly the best method for redirection except at about 10:20 where it tells me what I'm doing is incorrect. I have also read a number of other posts on IP redirection, but none tell me the best method, and some are a little different examples... I need for US visitors to see the US coming soon page and for Google to index the Australian website. I have seen a lot about JS redirects, IP redirects and .htaccess redirects, but unfortunately my technical knowledge of how these affect Google's bots doesn't really help. Appreciate your answers. Cheers, Lincoln

              Local Website Optimization | | LincolnSmith
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.