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.
Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my shop subdomain?
-
Hello Mozzers!
Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer so here goes...
Currently I have one robots.txt file hosted at https://www.mysitename.org.uk/robots.txt
We host our shop on a separate subdomain https://shop.mysitename.org.uk
Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my subdomain? (Some Google searches are telling me yes and some no and I've become awfully confused!
-
Thank you. I want to disallow specific URLs on the subdomain and add the shop sitemap in the robots.txt file. So I'll go ahead and create another!
-
You go be fine without one. You only need one if you want to manage that subdmain: add specific xml sitemaps links in robots.txt, cut access to specific folders for that subdomain.
if you don't need any of that - just move forward without one.
-
Currently we just have: User-agent: *
I'm in the process of optimising.
-
It depends what currently is in your robots.txt. Usually it would be useful to have another one for your subdomain.
-
Yes, I would have a seperate robots.txt files.
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
-
Deleting Tags Properly - Advice Needed
I have over 18,000 tags. Needless to say, most of them are relatively useless to the user and generate no traffic, while cluttering the site. (I use Wordpress.) My plan is to delete tags, but I want to do so safely as to not accumulate website errors. (Tags pages are noindexed.) What process should I take here? Here was my basic plan (any help is appreciated). 1. Find irrelevant tags that are connected with hardly any posts. 2. Go into the post, and remove said tag. 3. Now, with a tag having a 'count' of 0, I go into Tags, and delete it. Safe, right? But now it seems those tag pages just turned into 404s "Uh-oh...Page not found!" Where do I go from here? Create 410's? Thanks Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Robot.txt : How to block a specific file type in several subdirectories ?
Hello everyone ! I need help setting up a robot.txt. I'm trying to block all pdf files in particular directories so I'm using this command. In the example below the line is blocking all .gif in the entire site. Block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) | Disallow: /*.gif$ 2 questions : Can I use this command to specify one particular directory in which I want to block pdf files ? Will this line be recognized by googlebots ? Disallow: /fileadmin/xxxxxxx/xxx/xxxxxxx/*.pdf$ Then I realized that I would have to write as many lines as many directories there are in which I want to block pdf files. Let's say I want to block pdf files in all these 3 directories /fileadmin/directory1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1/pdf Is there a pattern-matching rule I could use to blocks access to pdf files in all subdirectories instead of writing 3x the above line for each subdirectory ? For exemple : Disallow: /fileadmin/directory1*/ Many thanks in advance for any insight you may have.
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Is it important to include image files in your sitemap?
I run an ecommerce business that has over 4000 product pages which, as you can imagine, branches off into thousands of image files. Is it necessary to include those in my sitemap for faster indexing? Thanks for you help! -Reed
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
Hi Everyone, I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page. The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites. Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20. I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc. Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please.... I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
Technical SEO | | DTOSI0 -
Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow
Hi Mozzers! We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter. We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming. But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems. What could be the reason? Best regards, Martin
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark0 -
I need help with a PHP canonical URL tags
I found a little difficult for me to do a canonical tag in my PHP. On-Page Report Card We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. I don't know how to tidy my PHP Any suggestion.
Technical SEO | | lnietob0 -
Robots.txt file getting a 500 error - is this a problem?
Hello all! While doing some routine health checks on a few of our client sites, I spotted that a new client of ours - who's website was not designed built by us - is returning a 500 internal server error when I try to look at the robots.txt file. As we don't host / maintain their site, I would have to go through their head office to get this changed, which isn't a problem but I just wanted to check whether this error will actually be having a negative effect on their site / whether there's a benefit to getting this changed? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | themegroup0 -
.htacess file format for Apache Server
Hi, My website having canonical issue for home page, I have written the .htaccess file and upload the root directory. But still I didn't see any changes in the home page. I am copying syntax which one I have written in the .htaccess file. Please review the syntax and let me know the changes. Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on #RewriteBase / re-direct index.htm to root / ### RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ /$1 [R=301,L] re-direct IP address to www ### re-direct non-www to www ### re-direct any parked domain to www of main domain RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www.metricstream.com$ [nc] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.metricstream.com/$1 [r=301,nc,L] Is there any specific htaccess file format for apache server? Thanks, Karthik
Technical SEO | | karthik-1755440