• 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
        111641
        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

                                        • ims2016

                                          Should I run my Shopify store on a subdomain or buy a new domain for it?

                                          I'm planning to set up a subdomain for my Shopify store but I'm not sure if this is the right approach. Should I purchase a separate domain for it? I'm running Wordpress on my website and want to keep it that way. I want to use Shopify for the ecommerce side. I want to link the store from the top nav and of course I'll use CTA's in a variety of ways to point to merchandise and other things on the store side.   Thanks for any help you can offer.

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ims2016
                                          0
                                        • RosemaryB

                                          The Great Subdomain vs. Subfolder Debate, what is the best answer?

                                          Recently one of my clients was hesitant to move their new store locator pages to a subdomain.  They have some SEO knowledge and cited the whiteboard Friday article at https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. While it is very possible that Rand Fiskin has a valid point I felt hesitant to let this be the final verdict.  John Mueller from Google Webmaster Central claims that Google is indifferent towards subdomains vs subfolders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1t5fs5VcI#t=50 Also this SEO disagreed with Rand Fiskin’s post about using sub folders instead of sub domains.  He claims that Rand Fiskin ran only 3 experiments over 2 years, while he has tested multiple subdomain vs subfolder experiments over 10 years and observed no difference. http://www.seo-theory.com/2015/02/06/subdomains-vs-subfolders-what-are-the-facts-on-rankings/ Here is another post from the Website Magazine.  They too believe that there is no SEO benefits of a subdomain vs subfolder infrastructure.  Proper SEO and infrastructure is what is most important. http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2015/03/10/seo-inquiry-subdomains-subdirectories.aspx Again Rand might be right, but I rather provide a recommendation to my client based on an authoritative source such as a Google engineer like John Mueller. Does anybody else have any thoughts and/or insight about this?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
                                          3
                                        • EvansHunt

                                          Wildcarding Robots.txt for Particular Word in URL

                                          Hey All, So I know that this isn't a standard robots.txt, I'm aware of how to block or wildcard certain folders but I'm wondering whether it's possible to block all URL's with a certain word in it? We have a client that was hacked a year ago and now they want us to help remove some of the pages that were being autogenerated with the word "viagra" in it. I saw this article and tried implementing it https://builtvisible.com/wildcards-in-robots-txt/ and it seems that I've been able to remove some of the URL's (although I can't confirm yet until I do a full pull of the SERPs on the domain). However, when I test certain URL's inside of WMT it still says that they are allowed which makes me think that it's not working fully or working at all. In this case these are the lines I've added to the robots.txt Disallow: /*&viagra Disallow: /*&Viagra I know I have the solution of individually requesting URL's to be removed from the index but I want to see if anybody has every had success with wildcarding URL's with a certain word in their robots.txt? The individual URL route could be very tedious. Thanks! Jon

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EvansHunt
                                          0
                                        • awrikat

                                          Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain

                                          Hi guys So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com 1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com we did a 301 redirect
                                          Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com  ? please help
                                          Thanks

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awrikat
                                          0
                                        • SEI

                                          Merging two different domains - subdomain or subfolder?

                                          My company has two sites on different domains. We are considering merging the sites into one and keeping only the dominant domain. The dominate site is already a sub-domain of a larger organization so the new sub-domain would be two levels deep.  I realize this is a little abstract so below is an example Dominant company site:       company.root-domain.com Secondary company site:     other-root-domain.com When they merge, everything will be on company.root-domain.com. Should it be other.company.root-domain.com   or company.root-domain.com/other Note: The other site has several hundred pages. Both sites have strong authority and link profiles. I want to maintain as much of the value on the other site as possible with the merge.

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEI
                                          0
                                        • fabrizzio

                                          Google is mixing subdomains. What can we do?

                                          Hi! I'm experiencing something that's kind of strange for me. I have my main domain let's say: www.domain.com. Then I have my mobile version in a subdomain: mobile.domain.com and I also have a german version of the website de.domain.com. When I Google my domain I have the main result linking to: www.domain.com but then Google mixes all the domains in the sites links. For example a Sing in may be linking mobile.domain.com, a How it works link may be pointing to de.domain.com, etc What's the solution? I think this is hurting a lot my position cause google sees that all are the same domain when clearly is not. thanks!!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabrizzio
                                          0
                                        • IHSwebsite

                                          Robots.txt: Can you put a /* wildcard in the middle of a URL?

                                          We have noticed that Google is indexing the language/country directory versions of directories we have disallowed in our robots.txt. For example: Disallow: /images/ is blocked just fine However, once you add our /en/uk/ directory in front of it, there are dozens of pages indexed. The question is: Can I put a wildcard in the middle of the string, ex. /en/*/images/, or do I need to list out every single country for every language in the robots file. Anyone know of any workarounds?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IHSwebsite
                                          0
                                        • HD_Leona

                                          Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

                                          Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
                                          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.