Removing site subdomains from Google search
-
Hi everyone,
I hope you are having a good week?
My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages.
I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this.
The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google.
In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
-
Hi Andrew,
If you can send me the domain I'll have a look at the DNS and see if there's anything that looks unusual. Drop me a message on here, or email me on david@bringdigital.co.uk
Cheers
David
-
Hi David,
Thank you very much for sharing these options with me. I don't have Google Analytics for the subdomains so I tried the second option.
I selected 'domain name provider', went with 'other', and added a txt record to the DNS configuration for the main domain as per Google's instructions yesterday. I just checked the status a minute ago and I'm still seeing the verification failure message coming up as below:
"Your verification DNS TXT record was not found. You might need to wait a few minutes before Google sees your changes to the TXT records."
How long does it normally take to verify a property this way?
Thanks again David for your kind help.
-
Hi Andrew! How is this going? We'd love an update!
-
Hi Andrew,
Is it possible for you to have your hosting provider or domain registrar setup a redirect from the old subdomains to the current domain in use?
Best regards,
Anders -
Hi Andrew,
This can be solved, you have a couple of options:
-
Do you have Google Analytics accounts for these subdomains? If so you could register search console via GA and remove the subdomains from there
-
Even if you don't have web hosting for these subdomains, as long as you have control over the main domain you can still take control of these subdomains. Is the core domain still under your control? If so you can register for search console via the 'domain name provider' option.
Thanks,
David
-
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
-
These days on Google results, it also shows the site map. I submitted my company's sitemap and it still does not show?What am I doing wrong?
Look at the image in the link. I want my company to look like the "pluralsight" website in Google. I want it to show the sitemap. I have already submitted the sitemap to Google few days back, what am I doing wrong? search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=pluralsight&oq=pluralsight&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.11024j0j8
Technical SEO | | Deein0 -
Google indexing staging / development site that is redirected...
Hi Moz Fans! - Please help. We had a acme.stagingdomain.com while a site was in development, when it went live it redirected (302) to acmeprofessionalservices.com (real names redacted!!) no known external links to staging site although staging site url has been emailed from Google Apps(!!!) now found that staging site is in the index even though it redirects to the proper public site. and some (but not all) of the pages are in the index too. They all redirect to the proper public site when visited. It is convenient to have a redirect from the staging site to the new one for the team, Chrome etc. remember frequently visited sites. Be a shame to lose that. Yes, these pages can be removed using webmaster tools.
Technical SEO | | mozroadjan
But how did they get in the index to start with? And if we're building a new site, and a customer has an existing site is there a danger of duplicate content etc. penalties caused by the staging site? We had a similar incident recently when a PDF that was not linked anywhere on the site appeared in the index. The link had been emailed through Google Apps, and visited in Chrome, but that was it. So 3 questions. Why is the staging site still in the index despite the redirects? How did they get in the index in the first place? Will the new staging site affect the rank of the existing site, eg. duplicate content penalties?0 -
Google Indexing Development Site Despite Robots.txt Block
Hi, A development site that has been set-up has the following Robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: / In an attempt to block Google indexing the site, however this isn't the case and the development site has since been indexed. Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CarlWint0 -
Page disappeared from Google index. Google cache shows page is being redirected.
My URL is: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse Hi. The week before last, my top Converse page went missing from the Google index. When I "fetch as Googlebot" I am able to get the page and "submit" it to the index. I have done this several times and still cannot get the page to show up. When I look at the Google cache of the page, it comes up with a different page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse shows: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/pop-in-olivia-kim Back story: As far as I know we have never redirected the Converse page to the Pop-In page. However the reverse may be true. We ran a Converse based Pop-In campaign but that used the Converse page and not the regular Pop-In page. Though the page comes back with a 200 status, it looks like Google thinks the page is being redirected. We were ranking #4 for "converse" - monthly searches = 550,000. My SEO traffic for the page has tanked since it has gone missing. Any help would be much appreciated. Stephan
Technical SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
What can i do to get google to visit my site more often
Hi, i am having serious problems since i upgraded my website from joomla 1.5 to 3.0 We have dropped down the rankings from page one for the word lifestyle magazine, and we have dropped down in rankings for other very important words including gastric band hypnotherapy and i am starting to regret having the site upgraded. i am finding the google is taking its time visiting my site, i know this for two reasons, one i have checked the cache and it is showing the 2nd july and i have checked articles that we have written and they are still not showing. example if i put this article name in word for word it does not come up, Carnival Divert Ships In The Caribbean Due To bad Weather this was an article that was done yesterday. in the old days before the upgrade that would have been in google now. these problems are costing us the loss of a great deal of traffic, we are losing around 70% of our traffic since the upgrade and would be grateful if people could give me advice on how to turn things around. we add articles all the time. each day we add a number of articles, i was considering changing the front page in the middle and having a few paragraphs of the latest story to get google to visit more often. i know this would look messy but i am running out of ideas. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google appending keyword to local search result(s)?
I noticed an interesting change today in how one of my clients appears in the SERPs. Google seems to be appending a keyword to his listing title. Client website: www.mycalgarydentist.com Keyword: Calgary dentist Rank: #2 or #1 lately Title tag: Calgary Dentist | Ambiance Dental Google+ Local listing title: Ambiance Dental Link title in SERP: Ambiance Dental: Calgary Dentist That last point is what's interesting, and new. As of a couple weeks ago (before I went on holidays) his link would simply show "Ambiance Dental", which makes sense because that's the title of his Google+ Local listing. Given the above information, I can't see why his link in Google's SERP is "Ambiance Dental: Calgary Dentist" when doing a search for that keyword. When I do a search for "Calgary dentists" or other similar searches, he simply shows as "Ambiance Dental", not "Ambiance Dental: Calgary Dentists" To test yourself, use the Google AdWords Preview Tool (https://adwords.google.com/d/AdPreview/), change locality to "Calgary, AB, Canada" and search. I suspect this doesn't mean he's violating Google's guidelines for business listings (i.e. businesses aren't supposed to add keywords to their business title). I'm certainly curious why this is happening though. Can anyone provide any insight? Has anyone seen anything similar? calgary-dentist-search.png
Technical SEO | | Kenoshi0 -
What would you do if a site's entire content is on a subdomain?
Scenario: There is a website called mydomain.com and it is a new domain with about 300 inbound links (some going to the product pages and categories), but they have some high trust links The website has categories a, b, c etc but they are all on a subdomain so instead of being mydomain.com/categoryA/productname the entire site's structure looks like subdomain.mydomain.com/categoryA/productname Would you go to the effort of 301ing the subdomain urls to the correct url structure of mydomain.com/category/product name, or would you leave it as it is? Just interested as to the extent of the issues this could cause in the future and if this is something worth resolving sooner than later.
Technical SEO | | Kerry220 -
Adding Google +1 To My Site
This may seem like a silly question, but I had my site designed by a third party and I don't know how to find this info. I want to add Google +1 button to my site. I've already added the script that makes it work in my , but don't know how to add the to the part of my site I'd like the icon to appear. If you take a look at my site, http://www.youdrivethesuccess.com/, you will see the twitter and facebook icons that follow you around the site in the top right of the page. I'd like to drop in the +1 right next to them, but I don't know how to get to it. How do I access this on the server? What section of my FTP do these lil icons live? A folder? Any direction is greatly appreciated...thanks.
Technical SEO | | brentmitchell0