Blocking Subdomain from Google Crawl and Index
-
Hey everybody, how is it going?
I have a simple question, that i need answered.
I have a main domain, lets call it domain.com. Recently our company will launch a series of promotions for which we will use cname subdomains, i.e try.domain.com, or buy.domain.com. They will serve a commercial objective, nothing more.
What is the best way to block such domains from being indexed in Google, also from counting as a subdomain from the domain.com. Robots.txt, No-follow, etc?
Hope to hear from you,
Best Regards,
-
Hello George, Thank you for fast answer! I read that article and there is some issue with that. if you can see at it, i'd really appreciate it. So the problem is that if i do it directly from Tumblr, it will also block it from Tumblr users. Here is the note right below that option "Allow this blog to appear in search results":
"This applies to searches on Tumblr as well as external search engines, like Google or Yahoo."Also, if i do it from GWT, i'm very concerned to remove URLs with my subdomain because i afraid it will remove all my domain. For example, my domain is abc.com and the Tumblr blog is setup on tumblr.abc.com. So i afraid if i remove tumblr.abc.com from index, it will also remove my abc.com. Please let me know what you think.
Thank you!
-
Hi Marina,
If I understand your question correctly, you just don't want your Tumblr blog to be indexed by Google. In which case these steps will help: http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/keep-tumblr-off-google-3061.html
Regards,
George
-
Hi guys, I read your conversation. I have similar issue but my situation is slightly different. I'll really appreciate if you can help with this. So i have also a subdomain that i don't want to be indexed by Google. However, that subdomain is not in my control. I mean, i created subdomain on my hosting but it is pointing to my Tumblr blog. So i don't have access to its robot txt. So can anybody advise what can i do in this situation to noindex that subdomain?
Thanks
-
Personally I wouldn't rely just on robots.txt, as one accidental, public link to any of the pages (easier than you may think!) will result in Google indexing that subdomain page (it just won't be followed). This means that the page can get "stuck" in Google's index and to resolve it you would need to remove it using WMT (instructions here). If there were a lot of pages accidentally indexed, you would need to remove the robots.txt restriction so Google can crawl it, and put a noindex/nofollow tags on the page so Google drops it from its index.
To cut a long story short, I would do both Steps 1 and 2 outlined by Federico if you want to sleep easy at night :).
George
-
It would also be smart to add the subdomains in Webmaster Tools in case one does get indexed and you need to remove it.
-
Robots.txt is easiest and quickest way. As a back up you can use the Noindex meta tag on the pages in the subdomain
-
2 ways to do it with different effects:
-
Robots.txt in each subdomain. This will entirely block any search engine to even access those pages, so they won't know what they have inside.
User-Agent:*
Disallow: /
-
noindex tags in those pages. This method allows crawlers to read the page and maybe index (if you set a "follow") the pages to which you link to.or "nofollow" if you don't want the linked pages to be indexed either.
Hope that helps!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Solved Recommended title length for Google search results
I read the recommended title length is 50-60 characters depending on alphabets, etc,.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike555
Anyways, my question is, is there any harm of having longer title?
If all my important keywords are within the 50-60 characters that will show up on search results, I can still make the title longer, it's just that those keywords outside won't have any effect on search results?0 -
Is it bad to include google Maps in footer?
We have 5 locations and we were thinking about including a map for each location in the footer. These would be set-up as no-follow links. They could potentially enhance user experience but it also increases size of footer. Right now there are just basic links to pages (sitemap, terms, etc), contact info, social links, and contact form. If we did the maps it would also include link to the individual location pages. Not sure if we are doing too much in footer or need to just keep it basic. Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | Restore0 -
Does this popup get crawled?
Hi, We have a popup on our site that shows examples of different trash cans that can be used for the bags we sell. Here's an example of a page that has the "common cans popup" http://www.plasticplace.com/3-gallon-high-density-6-mic-17x18-clear-trash-bags (This is a screenshot of where to click: http://screencast.com/t/8AvoktAcXtM) Is this content crawled by google? This is how it looks in our source code: view-source:http://www.plasticplace.com/gallon-size/20-30-gallon-trash-bags (start at line 913) Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Latent semantic Indexing - Does this help rankings/relevance?
Hi, Does semantically related words to the target term on a page help with rankings/relevance? If your after the term 'PC Screen' and you use the term 'PC Monitor' will go make the connection and also reward you because of the relevance? Anyone do this and have you seen any positives? I've just started to try this out lately and have been combining it with Wordle.net to give me an indication of where the content piece is heading and how aggressive the content leans towards certain words (makes things a little more interesting then calculating densities).
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Google Index Report
Hi, I have just checked my google webmaster tools account and viewed the index status of my website and it produced the attached graph, which show quite a big spike in indexing during July and August 2012. Does this look normal or does it reveal anything peculiar? We did have a new website launched in June 2012 and I re-submitted the sites URL's to google as part of the re-launch and so I am unsure if this may account for the spike. Any advice appreciated. Thanks indexing.png
On-Page Optimization | | UnderMe0 -
Full Crawl, now what?
Hi, Ok, I logged in this morning to see my full crawl of over 250 pages. I must admit I was expecting an email to inform me and to perhaps outline what my next steps should be. During the last 7 days I have fixed most of the pages that had errors and also added more keywords, just like what was suggested when I first signed up. So, is there a suggested plan of action I should now take to help increase the rankings, perhaps I'm missing this from the email or something? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Pulsar0 -
Google is indexing spam pages from my site. What is the most effective way to get ride of the search results? Pages are deleted now but should I do something more?
A long time ago I created a forum (Invision Power Board) and it got full of spam. Massive amounts! /forum/ I've now deleted the forum but the spam pages are still indexed on Google. Can I do something else to hurry up the process to get ride of them?
On-Page Optimization | | ocarlsson0 -
Google place 7 -> 40, why??
Hi, my new site http://www.ie-mac.com/ just dropped 33 places from place 7 to place 40 on goolge.com , for the two word combo: ie mac Did I screw up? How? Background Info: 1 Two weeks ago I moved my whole site from my old domain http://ie4mac.com/ to http://www.ie-mac.com/ with the goal of obtaining a good ranking for the keyword combo: ie mac. Apparantly tis worked- The site showed up on place 7. 2. I changed the design of the site and put the video on the front page. Good so far, still place 7, but: The text that google was showing was half the ALT-Tag of the Video first-slide image and the other half was our trademark disclaimer. 3. I changed the ALT tag and the disclaimer to give users a more inviting text on google. THis worked, google now shows the text as intended, but: For the desired combo: ie mac the site dropped to palce 40!! My best guesses at this point: 1. I'm using wordpress as a CMS and the all-in-one-seo-pack plugin to set custom titles etc., and the google XML sitemap plugin to buid an XML sitemap and notify google. During the couple of days, I made a lot of chnages to the site. Could be that the plugin pinged google a lot of times. Could this be part of the problem? 2. The site is hosted at http://www.ixwebhosting.com/ , because they give users dedicated IPs and a good price. However, the loadlevel on the server I'm on is always very high (10 - 20). I'm using a CDN for images and a caching plugin so the site loads in less than 2 seconds according to http://tools.pingdom.com/ . Unless the cache is empty, then it's 9 seconds. This is not great, but it's also no new, so: What could have caused the sudden drop from 7 to 40?? Thank you and kind regards
On-Page Optimization | | ie4mac0