Block a sub-domain from being indexed
-
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines?
One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag.
Thanks! - Kyle
-
Keep in mind that Google Index's everything that it can crawl. Even if you put a block in the robots.txt they will probably crawl it. You can require a password to that subdomain and keep big G out. This is easy to do if you have a site with cpanel access. Just go to manage permissions, and password protect that director with a .htaccess pw.
-
The robots.txt file just tells the bots you would "prefer" they don't index but there is nothing to prevent them from indexing.The only sure way to do this is to restrict access to the sub-domain for everyone and require some sort of authentication. If they don't have access they can't index.
-
In subdomain.example.com/robots.txt add the statements:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Warning: Be absolutely certain that the above statements are not included in your example.com/robots.txt file or you'll kill your site.
-
Each subdomain may have its own robots.txt file. So for that subdomain, you can put:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
In the robots.txt, and that should do it.
Please note that disallowing pages in robots.txt will not necessarily mean they won't appear on search result pages.... if people link to pages that are disallowed on that subdomain, they can still appear in SERPs. I had this happen with a few pages, which leads to funny listings in the SERPs because Google has to guess what the page title and description of the page should be, since it's not allowed to read the page. The meta noindex tag is the way to go if you want to be really sure the page doesn't appear in the SERPs. If you use that, don't disallow the page. Here's a recent SEOMoz post about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts
-
That was going to be my assumption but i wasn't 100% sure how they worked with sub domains. Are you able to supply a little more information on implementation? It is extremely important that it only blocks: sub.domain.com and not domain.com
-
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
-
Does the domain extension effect domain authority and ranking
We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?
Technical SEO | | easydomains0 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Removing a staging area/dev area thats been indexed via GWT (since wasnt hidden) from the index
Hi, If you set up a brand new GWT account for a subdomain, where the dev area is located (separate from the main GWT account for the main live site) and remove all pages via the remove tool (by leaving the page field blank) will this definately not risk hurting/removing the main site (since the new subdomain specific gwt account doesn't apply to the main site in any way) ?? I have a new client who's dev area has been indexed, dev team has now prevented crawling of this subdomain but the 'the stable door was shut after the horse had already bolted' and the subdomains pages are on G's index so we need to remove the entire subdomain development area asap. So we are going to do this via the remove tool in a subdomain specific new gwt account, but I just want to triple check this wont accidentally get main site removed too ?? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Domain recommendations for non indexed sites
For complicated internal reasons (which I swear have validity) we are starting websites that will then disallow from Google for ~1 year. Is there any value in purchasing "premium" domains with SEO juice or will we lose the value in the time we are hiding the website from Google?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Matching C Block
Hi Guys We have 2 sites that are in the same niche and competing for the same keywords. The sites are on seperate domains one is UK and one is .com They have their own IP's however have both have the same C Block... We have noticed that when the rankings for one site improves the other drops.... Could the C Block be causing this?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Domain tld question
Hi all, I have a question regarding the ranking of exact match tld which is co.uk Currently I have a .com domain with PR of 3 and the problem is that it have one word in front of my desired keyword, so it's not exact match. I have managed to buy an exact match but it's co.uk The questions are: Will a co.uk rank better for UK than .com domain I am reading at SEOMOZ that exact match domain value is getting lower, so is it worth to redirect my current .com domain to co.uk just to get rid of that one word and start all over again with exact match. Thanks
Technical SEO | | VasilTasev0 -
De-indexing thin content & Panda--any advantage to immediate de-indexing?
We added the nonidex, follow tag to our site about a week ago on several hundred URLs, and they are still in Google's index. I know de-indexing takes time, but I am wondering if having those URLs in the index will continue to "pandalize" the site. Would it be better to use the URL removal request? Or, should we just wait for the noindex tags to remove the URLs from the index?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google News not indexing .index.html pages
Hi all, we've been asked by a blog to help them better indexing and ranking on Google News (with the site being already included in Google News with poor results) The blog had a chronicle URL duplication problem with each post existing with 3 different URLs: #1) www.domain.com/post.html (currently in noindex for editorial choices as showing all the comments) #2) www.domain.com/post/index.html (currently indexed showing only top comments) #3) www.domain.com/post/ (very same as #2) We've chosen URL #2 (/index.html) as canonical URL, and included a rel=canonical tag on URL #3 (/) linking to URL #2.
Technical SEO | | H-FARM
Also we've submitted yesterday a Google News sitemap including consistently the list of URLs #2 from the last 48h . The sitemap has been properly "digested" by Google and shows that all URLs have been sent and indexed. However if we use the site:domain.com command on Google News we see something completely different: Google News has indexed actually only some news and more specifically only the URLs #3 type (ending with the trailing slash instead of /index.html). Why ? What's wrong ? a) Does Google News bot have problems indexing URLs ending with .index.html ? While figuring out what's wrong we've found out that http://news.google.it/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=inurl%3Aindex.html gives no results...it seems that Google News index overall does not include any URLs ending with /index.html b) Does Google News bot recognise rel=canonical tag ? c) Is it just a matter of time and then Google News will pick up the right URLs (/index.html) and/or shall we communicate Google News team any changes ? d) Any suggestions ? OR Shall we do the other way around. meaning make URL #3 the canonical one ? While Google News is showing these problems, Google Web search has actually well received the changes, so we don't know what to do. Thanks for your help, Matteo0