Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
-
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
-
Awesome! That did the trick -- thanks for your help. The site is no longer listed
-
Fact is, the robots file alone will never work (the link has a good explanation why - short form: all it does is stop the bots from indexing again).
Best to request removal then wait a few days.
-
Yeah. As of yet, the site has not been de-indexed. We placed the conditional rule in htaccess and are getting different robots.txt files for the domain and subdomain -- so that works. But I've never done this before so I don't know how long it's supposed to take?
I'll try to verify via Webmaster Tools to speed up the process. Thanks
-
You should do a remove request in Google Webmaster Tools. You have to first verify the sub-domain then request the removal.
See this post on why the robots file alone won't work...
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts
-
Awesome. We used your second idea and so far it looks like it is working exactly how we want. Thanks for the idea.
Will report back to confirm that the subdomain has been de-indexed.
-
Option 1 could come with a small performance hit if you have a lot of txt files being used on the server.
There shouldn't be any negative side effects to option 2 if the rewrite is clean (IE not accidently a redirect) and the content of the two files are robots compliant.
Good luck
-
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely have to do a bit more research into this one to make sure that it doesn't have any negative side effects before implementation
-
We have a plugin right now that places canonical tags, but unfortunately, the canonical for the subdomain points to the subdomain. I'll look around to see if I can tweak the settings
-
Sounds like (from other discussions) you may be stuck requiring a dynamic robot.txt file which detects what domain the bot is on and changes the content accordingly. This means the server has to run all .txt file as (I presume) PHP.
Or, you could conditionally rewrite the /robot.txt URL to a new file according to sub-domain
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.website.com$
RewriteRule ^robotx.txt$ robots-subdomain.txtThen add:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /to the robots-subdomain.txt file
(untested)
-
Placing canonical tags isn't an option? Detect that the page is being viewed through the subdomain, and if so, write the canonical tag on the page back to the root domain?
Or, just place a canonical tag on every page pointing back to the root domain (so the subdomain and root domain pages would both have them). Apparently, it's ok to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself. I haven't tried this, but if Matt Cutts says it's ok...
-
Hey Ryan,
I wasn't directly involved with the decision to create the subdomain, but I'm told that it is necessary to create in order to bypass certain elements that were affecting the root domain.
Nevertheless, it is a blog and the users now need to login to the subdomain in order to access the Wordpress backend to bypass those elements. Traffic for the site still goes to the root domain.
-
They both point to the same location on the server? So there's not a different folder for the subdomain?
If that's the case then I suggest adding a rule to your htaccess file to 301 the subdomain back to the main domain in exactly the same way people redirect from non-www to www or vice-versa. However, you should ask why the server is configured to have a duplicate subdomain? You might just edit your apache settings to get rid of that subdomain (usually done through a cpanel interface).
Here is what your htaccess might look like:
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
# Redirect non-www to wwww
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain.org [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.org/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> -
Not to me LOL I think you'll need someone with a bit more expertise in this area than I to assist in this case. Kyle, I'm sorry I couldn't offer more assistance... but I don't want to tell you something if I'm not 100% sure. I suspect one of the many bright SEOmozer's will quickly come to the rescue on this one.
Andy
-
Hey Andy,
Herein lies the problem. Since the domain and subdomain point to the exact same place, they both utilize the same robots.txt file.
Does that make sense?
-
Hi Kyle Yes, you can block an entire subdomain via robots.txt, however you'll need to create a robots.txt file and place it in the root of the subdomain, then add the code to direct the bots to stay away from the entire subdomain's content.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /hope this 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
-
Does a root domain get SEO power from its subdomains?
Hi there! I'd appreciate your help with the following case: a) Current 10-year-old website (community) on root domain "example.com" (250,000 incoming quality-backlinks) will move to the new subdomain "newsub.example.com" (301 redirects to the new subdomain for all current subfolders) b) A new website (shop) will launch on the root domain "example.com" Question: Will the new website on "example.com" get SEO power from the old website on "newsub.example.com"? SEO power = linkjuice/authority/trust/history/etc. from the 250,000 backlinks. What I'm trying to achieve: Maintain the built-up SEO power for the root domain "example.com" Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! P.S. Plenty has been written about subdomains inheriting from their root domains (so please don't share input on the subdomain vs. subfolder debate). But I can't find satisfactory info about the other way around (root domains inheriting from their subdomains), e.g. if wikia.com gets SEO power from its subdomains superman.wikia.com, starwars.wikia.com, etc.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ebebeb0 -
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Robots.txt Syntax
I have been having a hard time finding any decent information regarding the robots.txt syntax that has been written in the last few years and I just want to verify some things as a review for myself. I have many occasions where I need to block particular directories in the URL, parameters and parameter values. I just wanted to make sure that I am doing this in the most efficient ways possible and thought you guys could help. So let's say I want to block a particular directory called "this" and this would be an example URL: www.domain.com/folder1/folder2/this/file.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt
or
www.domain.com/folder1/this/folder2/file.html In order for me to block any URL that contains this folder anywhere in the URL I would use: User-agent: *
Disallow: /this/ Now lets say I have a parameter "that" I want to block and sometimes it is the first parameter and sometimes it isn't when it shows up in the URL. Would it look like this? User-agent: *
Disallow: ?that=
Disallow: &that= What about if there is only one value I want to block for "that" and the value is "NotThisGuy": User-agent: *
Disallow: ?that=NotThisGuy
Disallow: &that=NotThisGuy My big questions here are what are the most efficient ways to block a particular parameter and block a particular parameter value. Is there a more efficient way to deal with ? and & for when the parameter and value are either first or later? Secondly is there a list somewhere that will tell me all of the syntax and meaning that can be used for a robots.txt file? Thanks!0 -
Our main domain has thousands of subdomains with same content (expired hosting), how should we handle it?
Hello, Our client allows users to create free-trial subdomains and once the trial expires, all the domains have the same page. If people stick, their own websites are hosted on the subdomain. Since all these expired trials subdomains have the same content and are linking towards the Homepage, should they be nofollows? Has anyone dealt with something similar? Thanks very much in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCAILLE0 -
Block search bots on staging server
I want to block bots from all of our client sites on our staging server. Since robots.txt files can easily be copied over when moving a site to production, how can i block bots/crawlers from our staging server (at the server level), but still allow our clients to see/preview their site before launch?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueView13010 -
Why should I add URL parameters where Meta Robots NOINDEX available?
Today, I have checked Bing webmaster tools and come to know about Ignore URL parameters. Bing webmaster tools shows me certain parameters for URLs where I have added META Robots with NOINDEX FOLLOW syntax. I can see canopy_search_fabric parameter in suggested section. It's due to following kind or URLs. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas?canopy_fabric_search=1728 http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas?canopy_fabric_search=1729 http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas?canopy_fabric_search=1730 http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas?canopy_fabric_search=2239 But, I have added META Robots NOINDEX Follow to disallow crawling. So, why should it happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Subdomain v. subdirectory v. other domain for blogs
I have a good amount of content on our main domain ( http://m00.biz/w4Ljfr ) let's say for discussion it's doctors.com and as you can see, much of it is in subdirectories. Traditionally this was the approach. Now I have some other content on subdomains but it's primarily directories and databases. Now I see that Google is giving subdomains their own SER as if they are a separate site and competitors are locking in the top few results merely by having their content on subdomains. Now I have an opportunity of doing two things: 1. Current content: moving all the content of the past few years on their own subdomain (forum, blog), and I'll be moving forum software anyways. Not sure about our own guide, which has been up there for a while. 2. New content: putting up some new blogs/magazines such as "Doctor's Handbook." Let's say that is a common phrase. I can choose between the following: (a) www.doctors.com/handbook/ (b) handbook.doctors.com/ (c) www.doctorshandbook.com I've got a bit of a quandary here, not sure of the best course of action and am curious to hear from many of you who have handled situations like this before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | attorney0 -
Large Site SEO - Dev Issue Forcing URL Change - 301, 302, Block, What To Do?
Hola, Thanks in advance for reading and trying to help me out. A client of mine recently created a large scale company directory (500k+ pages) in Drupal v6 while the "marketing" type pages of their site was still in manual hard-coded HTML. They redesigned their "marketing" pages, but used Drual v7. They're now experiencing server conflicts with both instances of Drupal not allowing them to communicate/be on the same server. Eventually the directory will be upgraded to Drupal v7, but could take weeks to months the client does not want to wait for the re-launch. The client wants to push the new marketing site live, but also does not want to ruin the overall SEO value of the directory and have a few options, but I'm looking to help guide them down the path of least resistance: Option 1: Move the company directory onto a subdomain and the "marketing site" on the www. subdomain. Client gets to push their redesign live, but large scale 301s to the directory cause major issues in terms of shaking up the structure of the site causing ripple effects into getting pulled out of the index for days to weeks. Rankings and traffic drop, subdomain authority gets lost and the company directory health looks bad for weeks to months. However, 301 maintains partial SEO value and some long tail traffic still exists. Once the directory gets moved to Drupal v7, the directory will then cancel the 301 to the subdomain and revert back to original www. subdomain URLs Option 2: Block the company directory from search engines with robots.txt and meta instructions, essentially cutting off the floodgates from the established marketing pages. No major scaling 301 ripple effect, directory takes a few weeks to filter out of the index, traffic is completely lost, however once drupal v7 gets upgraded and the directory is then re-opened, directory will then slowly gain back SEO value to get close to old rankings, traffic, etc. Option 3: 302 redirect? Lose all accumulate SEO value temporarily... hmm Option 4: Something else? As you can see, this is not an ideal situation. However, a decision has to be made and I'm looking to chose the lesser of evils. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again -Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bacon0