Blocking subdomains without blocking sites...
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So let's say I am working for bloggingplatform.com, and people can create free sites through my tools and those sites show up as myblog.bloggingplatform.com. However that site can also be accessed from myblog.com.
Is there a way, separate from editing the myblog.com site code or files, for me to tell google to stop indexing myblog.bloggingplatform.com while still letting them index myblog.com without inserting any code into the page load?
This is a simplification of a problem I am running across.
Basically, Google is associating subdomains to my domain that it shouldn't even index, and it is adversely affecting my main domain. Other than contacting the offending sub-domain holders (which we do), I am looking for a way to stop Google from indexing those domains at all (they are used for technical purposes, and not for users to find the sites).
Thoughts?
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Ah, I see now. Try this out http://moz.com/community/q/block-an-entire-subdomain-with-robots-txt#reply_26992 - basically, when a subdomain is identified, it would pull a different file into the robots.txt location (which would contain the disallow: / syntax)
Read the remaining comments about getting the subdomain removed via GWT.
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You are correct, but that isn't what I was asking.
user1.bloggingplatform.com and myblog.com point to the same web server files. If I put up a robots.txt on user1.b... I would effectively de-index myblog.com.
The problem we have run accross is that user205.bloggingplatform.com might be doing something shady, but instead of de-listing the subdomain google kills the primary domain from the index as well.
Because user205.bloggingplatform.com should only be used for technical reasons, and not be in Google's index I am looking for a way to tell google not to index the sub-domain.
I think the better way to solve the problem would be to change the technical subdomain's domain though so change it from user205.bloggingplatform.com to user205.bloggingplatformtesting.com.
Then google can kill that URL all it wants as I don't care.
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bloggingplatform.com/robots.txt
and
user1.bloggingplatform.com/robots.txt
can and should be different. If you disallow at the subdomain level, only the subdomain will be affected. You can search around for other examples of this but i'm certain it works (we have a development domain that is indexed and create subdomains for all clients that aren't indexed and done via individual robots.txt files)
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I don't think that works. Since both URLs point to the same server the robots.txt file for the test URL would completely kill the main url.
Or am I missing something?
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Each subdomain should have a robots.txt file that blocks that specific subdomain. e.g. user1.bloggingplatform.com/robots.txt should have:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
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