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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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
    • 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. Technical SEO
    4. No index on subdomains

    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.

    No index on subdomains

    Technical SEO
    4
    4
    2346
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Creditsafe
      Creditsafe last edited by

      Hi,

      We have a subdomain that is appearing in the search results - I want to hide this as it looks really bad. If I were to add the no index tag to the sub domain would URL would this affect the whole domain or just that sub domain?

      The main domain is vitally important - it is just that sub domain I need to hide.

      Many thanks

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

        Andy and Alan covered what you need to do. One more thing to keep in mind, check the traffic, you don't want to lose those spot in the SERPS. You might want to consider fixing up the subdomain if it gets you conversions and traffic.

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

          does the root domain link to the subdomain?

          if so then noindex,follow the pages in the subdomain, this will allow link juice to flow back out of the subdomain.
          any links pointing to a  nofollow page will waste their link juice

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Andy.Drinkwater
            Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

            Hi Nicholas,

            You are fine noindexing the subdomain. However, you will need to create a new robots.txt file and place it in the subdomain root for it to work.

            -Andy

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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

            • vikrantrathore

              Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?

              Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues

              Technical SEO | | vikrantrathore
              0
            • RichHamilton_qcs

              Best practices for types of pages not to index

              Trying to better understand best practices for when and when not use a content="noindex".  Are there certain types of pages that we shouldn't want Google to index?  Contact form pages, privacy policy pages, internal search pages, archive pages (using wordpress).  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

              Technical SEO | | RichHamilton_qcs
              0
            • cokergroup

              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 | | cokergroup
              0
            • schof

              Should we move our documentation off subdomain?

              Background: We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com.  Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com.  We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt). Question: Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this?  There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform.  Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain.  WDYT?

              Technical SEO | | schof
              0
            • vernonmack

              Blogs are best when hosted on domain, subdomain, or...?

              I’ve heard the it is a best practice to host your blog within your site. I’ve also heard it’s best to put it on a subdomain.  What do you believe is the best home for your blog and why?

              Technical SEO | | vernonmack
              0
            • anand2010

              How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!

              Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as  well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.

              Technical SEO | | anand2010
              0
            • RogersSEO

              /index.php in sitemap? take it out?

              Hi Everyone, The following was automatically generated at xml-sitemaps.com Should I get rid of the index.php url from my sitemap?  If so, how do I go about redirecting it in my htaccess ? <url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/</loc></url>
              <url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/index.php</loc></url> thank you in advance, Martin

              Technical SEO | | RogersSEO
              0
            • fabiank

              Index forum sites

              Hi Moz Team, somehow the last question i raised a few days ago not only wasnt answered up until now, it was also completely deleted and the credit was not "refunded" - obviously there was some data loss involved with your restructuring. Can you check whether you still find the last question and answer it quickly? I need the answer 🙂 Here is one more question: I bought a website that has a huge forum, loads of pages with user generated content. Overall around 500.000 Threads with 9 Million comments. The complete forum is noindex/nofollow when i bought the site, now i am thinking about what is the best way to unleash the potential. The current system is vBulletin 3.6.10. a) Shall i first do an update of vbulletin to version 4 and use the vSEO tool to make the URLs clean, more user and search engine friendly before i switch to index/follow? b) would you recommend to have the forum in the folder structure or on a subdomain? As far as i know subdomain does take lesser strenght from the TLD, however, it is safer because the subdomain is seen as a separate entity from the regular TLD. Having it in he folder makes it easiert to pass strenght from the TLD to the forum, however, it puts my TLD at risk c) Would you release all forum sites at once or section by section? I think section by section looks rather unnatural not only to search engines but also to users, however, i am afraid of blasting more than a millionpages into the index at once. d) Would you index the first page of a threat or all pages of a threat? I fear duplicate content as the different pages of the threat contain different body content but the same Title and possibly the same h1. Looking forward to hear from you soon! Best Fabian

              Technical SEO | | fabiank
              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.