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.
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
-
Virtual URL Google not indexing?
Dear all, We have two URLs: The main URL which is crawled both by GSC and where Moz assigns our keywords is: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/ The second one is called a virtual url by our developpers: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/signedandunsignedprintsforsale/ This is currently not indexed by Google. We have been linking to the second URL and I am unable to see if this is passing juice/anything on to the main one /banksy/ Is it a canonical? The /banksy/ is the one that is being picked up in serps/by Moz and worry that the two similar URLs are splitting the signal. Should I redirect from the second to the first? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | TAT1000 -
Does Google penalize you for reindexing multiple URLS?
Hello, Just a quick, question! I was wanting to know if multiple page indexing (site overhaul) could cause a drop in organic traffic ranking or be penalized by Google for submitting multiple pages at one time. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | InternetRep0 -
Does RSS Feed help to rank better in Google?
Hello, I heard RSS Feed helps in ranking. However, I am not sure if I should enable RSS Feed or not. Whenever I publish an article on my site , I see that many other websites have leeched my Feed and get's the same article I written published with a nofollow backlink to my website article. The worst part is that my article doesn't appear in Google search, but the website which copied my article gets ranked in Google. Although the article gets index on google (checked by using site:website.com). Although some articles show up after 24 hours by ranking higher from the sites which copied my article. Any idea what should I do? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2010 -
No-index all the posts of a category
Hi everyone! I would like no-indexing all the posts of a specific category of my wordpress site. The problem is that the structure of my URL is composed without /category/: www.site-name.ext/date/post-name/
On-Page Optimization | | salvyy
so without /category-name/ Is possibile to disallow the indexing of all the posts of the category via robots.txt? Using Yoast Plugin I can put the no-index for each post, but I would like to put the no-index (or disallow/) a time for all the post of the category. Thanks in advance for your help and sorry for my english. Mike0 -
Why does Google pick a low priority page on my site?
Hi Guys. One of my pages ranks quite well for "mid year diaries 14-15" on Google. The problem is it's a really specific product page (A4, Hardback, day-to-a-page diary I think). It would be much better for the user to land on our mid-year diaries category, not really deep into the site. Why is Google prioritizing this product page over our general 'mid year diaries' category? Especially when the category would relate to the search more accurately? I work for TOAD diaries and I think our page rank is 10 for this search. Eagerly awaiting some insight 🙂 Thanks in advance everyone! Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Does Rel=canonical affect google shopping feed?
I have a client who gets a good portion of their sales (~40%) from Google Product Feeds, and for those they want each (Product X Quantity) to have it’s own SKU, as they often get 3 listings in a given Google shopping query, i.e. 2,4,8 units of a given product. However, we are worried about this creating duplicate content on the search side. Do you know if we could rel=canonical on the site without messing with their google shopping results? The crux of the issue is that they want the products to appear distinct for the product feed, and unified for the web so as not to dilute. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | VISISEEKINC0 -
How long does it take for Google to see Changes to a site?
Hi, I have a low PR site (PR 1) that I am starting to work on. Ingeneral when you make changes to my site how long would it take Google to recognize and index those changes? The reason I am wondering is because the site I am working on had a lot of duplicate content (around 700 pages), I got rid of it all, but I wasn't sure how long it would take Google to spider all these pages and re-index them since the site is low PR. Thanks, Ken
On-Page Optimization | | Jason_3420 -
Does a page's url have any weight in Google rankings?
I'm sure this question must have been asked before but I can't find it. I'm assuming that the title tag is far more important than the page's url. Is that correct? Does the url have any relevance to Google?
On-Page Optimization | | rdreich490