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.
Block a sub-domain from being indexed
-
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines?
One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag.
Thanks! - Kyle
-
Keep in mind that Google Index's everything that it can crawl. Even if you put a block in the robots.txt they will probably crawl it. You can require a password to that subdomain and keep big G out. This is easy to do if you have a site with cpanel access. Just go to manage permissions, and password protect that director with a .htaccess pw.
-
The robots.txt file just tells the bots you would "prefer" they don't index but there is nothing to prevent them from indexing.The only sure way to do this is to restrict access to the sub-domain for everyone and require some sort of authentication. If they don't have access they can't index.
-
In subdomain.example.com/robots.txt add the statements:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Warning: Be absolutely certain that the above statements are not included in your example.com/robots.txt file or you'll kill your site.
-
Each subdomain may have its own robots.txt file. So for that subdomain, you can put:
User-agent: * Disallow: /In the robots.txt, and that should do it.
Please note that disallowing pages in robots.txt will not necessarily mean they won't appear on search result pages.... if people link to pages that are disallowed on that subdomain, they can still appear in SERPs. I had this happen with a few pages, which leads to funny listings in the SERPs because Google has to guess what the page title and description of the page should be, since it's not allowed to read the page. The meta noindex tag is the way to go if you want to be really sure the page doesn't appear in the SERPs. If you use that, don't disallow the page. Here's a recent SEOMoz post about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts
-
That was going to be my assumption but i wasn't 100% sure how they worked with sub domains. Are you able to supply a little more information on implementation? It is extremely important that it only blocks: sub.domain.com and not domain.com
-
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
-
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Z-indexed content
I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | cokergroup0 -
No Index PDFs
Our products have about 4 PDFs a piece, which really inflates our indexed pages. I was wondering if I could add REL=No Index to the PDF's URL? All of the files are on a file server, so they are embedded with links on our product pages. I know I could add a No Follow attribute, but I was wondering if any one knew if the No Index would work the same or if that is even possible. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
Moving my domain to weebly
I am thinking of moving my html website to weebly. They offer a 301 redirect for my domain name. Is that ok for SEO?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Multilingual Website - Sub-domain VS Sub-directory
Hi Folks - Need your advice on the pros and cons of going with a sub-domain vs a sub-directory approach for a multi lingual website. The best would be a ccTLD but that is not possible now, so I would be more interested in knowing your take on these 2 options. Though, I have gone through http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/ and this somewhat vouches for a sub-directory, but what would you say'?
Technical SEO | | RanjeetP0 -
Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain
My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AscendLearning0 -
Google is indexing my directories
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Tutorial For Moving Blogger Blog From Sub-Domain to Sub-Directory
Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial for moving a blogger.com (blogspot) blog that's currently hosted on a subdomain (i.e. blog.mysite.com) to a subdirectory (i.e. mysite.com/blog) with the current version of blogger? I'm working on transferring my blogger blogs over to wordpress, and to do so without losing link juice or traffic, this is one of the steps I have to take. There's plenty of tutorials that address moving from blogspot.mysite.com to wordpress and I've even found a few that address moving from blog.mysite.com (hosted on blogger) to a root domain mysite.com. However, I need to move from blog.mysite.com (blogger) to mysite.com/blog/ - subdirectory (wordpress). Anyone who knows how to do this or can point me in the right direction?? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0