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.
Subdomain replaced domain in Google SERP
-
Good morning,
This is my first post. I found many Q&As here that mostly answer my question, but just to be sure we do this right I'm hoping the community can take a peak at my thinking below:
Problem: We are relevant rank #1 for "custom poker chips" for example. We have this development website on a subdomain (http://dev.chiplab.com). On Saturday our live 'chiplab.com' main domain was replaced by 'dev.chiplab.com' in the SERP.
Expected Cause: We did not add NOFOLLOW to the header tag. We also did not DISALLOW the subdomain in the robots.txt. We could have also put the 'dev.chiplab.com' subdomain behind a password wall.
Solution: Add NOFOLLOW header, update robots.txt on subdomain and disallow crawl/index.
Question: If we remove the subdomain from Google using WMT, will this drop us completely from the SERP? In other words, we would ideally like our root chiplab.com domain to replace the subdomain to get us back to where we were before Saturday. If the removal tool in WMT just removes the link completely, then is the only solution to wait until the site is recrawled and reindexed and hope the root chiplab.com domain ranks in place of the subdomain again?
Thank you for your time,
Chase
-
Hi Chase,
Removing dev via web master tools should do the trick for now. Then since google won't get to dev anymore you should be safe.
Adding both noindex and password protection is not needed. Since it's password protected Google won't get to see the noindex on the pages. So you should only do one of the two. No need to change now. The password protection is safe.
As expected 'dev.chiplab.com' was removed from the SERP. Now, I'm a bit worried that the link equity was transferred for good to the subdomain from 'www.chiplab.com'. That's not possible, right?
*** Yes, that's not possible so you are good.
Only 301 redirections are "mandatory" for Google to pass equity - so all good.
-
No worries, that's what this community is here for!
Google views subdomains as different entities. They have different authority metrics and therefore different ranking power. Removing a URL on a subdomain won't have any affect on it's brother over on a different subdomain (for example: dev. and www.).
Good call to keep the disallow: / on the dev.chiplab.com/robots.txt file - I forgot to mention that you should leave it there, for anti-crawling purpose.
This is the query you'll want to keep an eye on. The info: operator is new and can be used to show you what Google has indexed as your 'canonical' homepage.
-
Hi Logan,
Last follow-up. I swear.
Since I'm pretty new to this I got scared and cancelled the 'dev.chiplab.com' link removal request. I did this because I didn't want to go up 14 days without any traffic (this is the estimated time I found that the Google SERP can take to be updated even though we "fetched as GoogleBot in GWT). May be wrong on the SERP update time?
So what I did was add a 301 permanent redirect from 'dev.chiplab.com' to 'www.chiplab.com'. I've kept the NOFOLLOW/NOINDEX header on all 'dev' subdomains of course. I've kept the DISALLOW in robots.txt for the dev.chiplab.com site specifically. So now I just plan on doing work in the 'dev' site (because I can't test anything with the redirects happening). And then hopefull in 14 days or so the domain name will change gracefully in the Google SERP from dev.chiplab.com to www.chiplab.com. I did all of this because of how many sales we would lose if it took 14 days to start ranking again for this term. Good?
Best,
Chase
-
You should be all set# I wouldn't worry about link equity, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on your domain authority over the next few days.
-
Hi Logan,
Thanks for fast reply!
We did the following:
- Added NOINDEX on the entire subdomain
- Temporarily removed 'dev.chiplab.com' using Google Webmaster Tools
- Password protected 'dev.chiplab.com'
As expected 'dev.chiplab.com' was removed from the SERP. Now, I'm a bit worried that the link equity was transferred for good to the subdomain from 'www.chiplab.com'. That's not possible, right? Do we now just wait until GoogleBot crawls 'www.chiplab.com' and hope that it is restored to #1?
Thank you for your time (+Shawn, +Matt, +eyqpaq),
Chase
-
noindex would be the easiest way.
Seen some people having the same issue fixing it by adding rel canonical to dev pointing to the new site and so the main site got back step by step with no interruptions...
Cheers.
-
Just like Chase said, noindex your dev site to let the search engines know that it should not show in search. I do this on my dev sites everytime.
-
The most ideal method would be to make the dev page password protected. What I would do is to 301 redirect the dev page to the subsequent correct site pages and then when the SERP refreshes, I'd make the dev site a password protected site.
-
Hi Chase,
Removing the subdomain within Search Console (WMT) will not remove the rest of your WWW URLs. Since you have different properties in Search Console for each, they are treated separately. That removal is only temporary though.
The most sure-fire way to ensure you don't get dev. URLs indexed is to put a NOINDEX tag on that entire subdomain. NOFOLLOW simply means that links on whatever page that tag is on won't be followed by bots.
Remember, crawling and indexing are different things. For example, if on your live www. site you had an absolute link somewhere in the mix that had dev.chiplab.com in it, since you presumably haven't nofollowed your live site, a bot will still access that page. The same situation goes for a robots.txt disallow. That only prevents crawling, not indexing. In theory, a bot can get to a disallowed URL and still index it. See this query for an example.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
Why isn't our complete meta title showing up in the Google SERPS? (cut off half way)
We carry a product line, cutless bearings (for use on boats). For instance, we have one, called the Able, that has the following meta title (and searched by View Page Source to confirm): BOOT 1-3/8" x 2-3/8" x 5-1/2" Johnson Cutless Bearing | BOOT Cutlass However, if I search for it on on Google by part number or name (boot cutless bearing, boot cutlass bearing), the meta title comes back with whole first part chopped off, only showing this : "x 5-1/2" Johnson Cutless Bearing | BOOT Cutlass - Citimarine ..." Any idea why? Here's the url if it will hopefully help: https://citimarinestore.com/en/metallic-inches/156-boot-johnson-cutless-bearing-870352103.html All the products in the category are doing the same. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citimarine0 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
When should you redirect a domain completely?
We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0 -
Disavow Subdomain?
Hi all, I've been checking and it seems like there are only 2 options when disavowing links with Google's tool. Disavow the link: http://spam.example.com/stuff/content.htm Disavow the domain: domain: example.com What can I do if I want do disavow a subdomain? i.e. spam.site.com I'm also assuming that if I were to disavow the domain it would include all subdomains? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Recovery during domain migration
On average, how long does it takes to recover 80% of the rankings if two high authority domains are combined without chaging any content? I totally understand that each domain is different and search engines can treat them differently but if all the steps are followed to the T what are the chances?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninjamarketer1