• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?

        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 an entire subdomain with robots.txt?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        5
        16
        111646
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • kylesuss
          kylesuss last edited by

          Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?

          I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 12
          • kylesuss
            kylesuss @kylesuss last edited by

            Awesome! That did the trick -- thanks for your help. The site is no longer listed 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • sprynewmedia
              sprynewmedia @kylesuss last edited by

              Fact is, the robots file alone will never work (the link has a good explanation why - short form: all it does is stop the bots from indexing again).

              Best to request removal then wait a few days.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • kylesuss
                kylesuss @kylesuss last edited by

                Yeah. As of yet, the site has not been de-indexed. We placed the conditional rule in htaccess and are getting different robots.txt files for the domain and subdomain -- so that works. But I've never done this before so I don't know how long it's supposed to take?

                I'll try to verify via Webmaster Tools to speed up the process. Thanks

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • sprynewmedia
                  sprynewmedia @kylesuss last edited by

                  You should do a remove request in Google Webmaster Tools.  You have to first verify the sub-domain then request the removal.

                  See this post on why the robots file alone won't work...

                  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • kylesuss
                    kylesuss @kylesuss last edited by

                    Awesome. We used your second idea and so far it looks like it is working exactly how we want. Thanks for the idea.

                    Will report back to confirm that the subdomain has been de-indexed.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • sprynewmedia
                      sprynewmedia @kylesuss last edited by

                      Option 1 could come with a small performance hit if you have a lot of txt files being used on the server.

                      There shouldn't be any negative side effects to option 2 if the rewrite is clean (IE not accidently a redirect) and the content of the two files are robots compliant.

                      Good luck

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • kylesuss
                        kylesuss @sprynewmedia last edited by

                        Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely have to do a bit more research into this one to make sure that it doesn't have any negative side effects before implementation

                        sprynewmedia kylesuss 6 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • kylesuss
                          kylesuss @john4math last edited by

                          We have a plugin right now that places canonical tags, but unfortunately, the canonical for the subdomain points to the subdomain. I'll look around to see if I can tweak the settings

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • sprynewmedia
                            sprynewmedia last edited by

                            Sounds like (from other discussions) you may be stuck requiring a dynamic robot.txt file which detects what domain the bot is on and changes the content accordingly.  This means the server has to run all .txt file as (I presume) PHP.

                            Or, you could conditionally rewrite the /robot.txt URL to a new file according to sub-domain

                            RewriteEngine on
                            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.website.com$
                            RewriteRule ^robotx.txt$ robots-subdomain.txt

                            Then add:

                            User-agent: *
                            Disallow: /

                            to the robots-subdomain.txt file

                            (untested)

                            kylesuss 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • john4math
                              john4math last edited by

                              Placing canonical tags isn't an option?  Detect that the page is being viewed through the subdomain, and if so, write the canonical tag on the page back to the root domain?

                              Or, just place a canonical tag on every page pointing back to the root domain (so the subdomain and root domain pages would both have them).  Apparently, it's ok to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself.  I haven't tried this, but if Matt Cutts says it's ok...

                              kylesuss 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • kylesuss
                                kylesuss @AdoptionHelp last edited by

                                Hey Ryan,

                                I wasn't directly involved with the decision to create the subdomain, but I'm told that it is necessary to create in order to bypass certain elements that were affecting the root domain.

                                Nevertheless, it is a blog and the users now need to login to the subdomain in order to access the Wordpress backend to bypass those elements. Traffic for the site still goes to the root domain.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • AdoptionHelp
                                  AdoptionHelp last edited by

                                  They both point to the same location on the server? So there's not a different folder for the subdomain?

                                  If that's the case then I suggest adding a rule to your htaccess file to 301 the subdomain back to the main domain in exactly the same way people redirect from non-www to www or vice-versa. However, you should ask why the server is configured to have a duplicate subdomain? You might just edit your apache settings to get rid of that subdomain (usually done through a cpanel interface).

                                  Here is what your htaccess might look like:

                                  <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
                                    # Redirect non-www to wwww
                                    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain.org [NC]
                                    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.org/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>

                                  kylesuss 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                  • AndyKuiper
                                    AndyKuiper last edited by

                                    Not to me LOL 🙂 I think you'll need someone with a bit more expertise in this area than I to assist in this case. Kyle, I'm sorry I couldn't offer more assistance... but I don't want to tell you something if I'm not 100% sure. I suspect one of the many bright SEOmozer's will quickly come to the rescue on this one.

                                    Andy 🙂

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • kylesuss
                                      kylesuss @AndyKuiper last edited by

                                      Hey Andy,

                                      Herein lies the problem. Since the domain and subdomain point to the exact same place, they both utilize the same robots.txt file.

                                      Does that make sense?

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • AndyKuiper
                                        AndyKuiper last edited by

                                        Hi Kyle 🙂 Yes, you can block an entire subdomain via robots.txt, however you'll need to create a robots.txt file and place it in the root of the subdomain, then add the code to direct the bots to stay away from the entire subdomain's content.

                                        User-agent: *
                                        Disallow: /

                                        hope this helps 🙂

                                        kylesuss 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                        • 1 / 1
                                        • First post
                                          Last post

                                        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.

                                        • See all categories

                                        Related Questions

                                        • Mat_C

                                          Block session id URLs with robots.txt

                                          Hi, I would like to block all URLs with the parameter '?filter=' from being crawled by including them in the robots.txt. Which directive should I use: User-agent: *
                                          Disallow: ?filter= or User-agent: *
                                          Disallow: /?filter= In other words, is the forward slash in the beginning of the disallow directive necessary? Thanks!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
                                          1
                                        • ThomasHarvey

                                          Large robots.txt file

                                          We're looking at potentially creating a robots.txt with 1450 lines in it. This will remove 100k+ pages from the crawl that are all old pages (I know, the ideal would be to delete/noindex but not viable unfortunately) Now the issue i'm thinking is that a large robots.txt will either stop the robots.txt from being followed or will slow our crawl rate down. Does anybody have any experience with a robots.txt of that size?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey
                                          0
                                        • ThomasHarvey

                                          What do you add to your robots.txt on your ecommerce sites?

                                          We're looking at expanding our robots.txt, we currently don't have the ability to noindex/nofollow. We're thinking about adding the following: Checkout Basket Then possibly: Price Theme Sortby other misc filters. What do you include?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey
                                          0
                                        • bizzer

                                          Does blocking foreign country IP traffic to site, hurt my SEO / US Google rankings?

                                          I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors.  99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US.  But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account.  I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others. But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this.  I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly.  However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site?  Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches. At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer
                                          0
                                        • nodiffrei

                                          Using subdomains for related landing pages?

                                          Seeking subdomain usage and related SEO advice...  I'd like to use multiple subdomains for multiple landing pages all with content related to the main root domain. Why?...Cost: so I only have to register one domain. One root domain for better 'branding'. Multiple subdomains that each focus on one specific reason & set of specific keywords people would search a solution to their reason to hire us (or our competition).

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nodiffrei
                                          0
                                        • EEE3

                                          Subdomain Blog Sitemap link - Add it to regular domain?

                                          Example of setup:
                                          www.fancydomain.com
                                          blog.fancydomain.com Because of certain limitations, I'm told we can't put our blogs at the subdirectory level, so we are hosting our blogs at the subdomain level (blog.fancydomain.com). I've been asked to incorporate the blog's sitemap link on the regular domain, or even in the regular domain's sitemap. 1. Putting the a link to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml in the www.fancydomain.com/sitemap.xml -- isn't this against sitemap.org protocol? 2. Is there even a reason to do this? We do have a link to the blog's home page from the www.fancydomain.com navigation, and the blog is set up with its sitemap and link to the sitemap in the footer. 3. What about just including a text link "Blog Sitemap" (linking to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.html) in the footer of the www.fancydomain.com (adjacent to the text link "Sitemap" which already exists for the www.fancydomain.com's sitemap. Just trying to make sense of this, and figure out why or if it should be done. Thanks!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE3
                                          0
                                        • vmotuz

                                          Follow or nofollow to subdomain

                                          Hi, I run a hotel booking site and the booking engine is setup on a subdomain.
                                           The subdomain is disabled from being indexed in robots.txt Should the links from the main domain have a nofollow to the subdomain? What are you thoughts? Thanks!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmotuz
                                          0
                                        • iAnalyst.com

                                          Create a new XML Sitemap for a blog subdomain?

                                          What would be the best way to go about this? A site just put a blog on http://blog.domain.com/ Should there be a separate XML Sitemap for that particular subdomain or should the original XML Sitemap for the main domain be sufficient? Looking forward to your responses. Thanks

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com
                                          0

                                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                        Start my free trial
                                        Products
                                        • Moz Pro
                                        • Moz Local
                                        • Moz API
                                        • Moz Data
                                        • STAT
                                        • Product Updates
                                        Moz Solutions
                                        • SMB Solutions
                                        • Agency Solutions
                                        • Enterprise Solutions
                                        • Digital Marketers
                                        Free SEO Tools
                                        • Domain Authority Checker
                                        • Link Explorer
                                        • Keyword Explorer
                                        • Competitive Research
                                        • Brand Authority Checker
                                        • Local Citation Checker
                                        • MozBar Extension
                                        • MozCast
                                        Resources
                                        • Blog
                                        • SEO Learning Center
                                        • Help Hub
                                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                        • How-to Guides
                                        • Moz Academy
                                        • API Docs
                                        About Moz
                                        • About
                                        • Team
                                        • Careers
                                        • Contact
                                        Why Moz
                                        • Case Studies
                                        • Testimonials
                                        Get Involved
                                        • Become an Affiliate
                                        • MozCon
                                        • Webinars
                                        • Practical Marketer Series
                                        • MozPod
                                        Connect with us

                                        Contact the Help team

                                        Join our newsletter
                                        Moz logo
                                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                        • Accessibility
                                        • Terms of Use
                                        • Privacy

                                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.