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.
Domain Masking SEO Impact
-
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
-
Glad to be of service!
-
Thank you for this response. This helps me a ton as I discuss with our web team on the best way to set the coding for the site so that we are not registering errors but also not hurting the actual site in any way.
-
This is a good idea, but Robots.txt stops pages being crawled - it doesn't stop pages being indexed. For that you need to fire the Meta No-Index directive on the affected URLs. If you can't edit their code you can fire the same directive through the HTTP header via X-Robots. On that linked post, you'll need to scroll down a little. If possible you could also alter those URLs to serve status code 410 (gone) so that Google knows, those URLs aren't really on your site
Note that you'll need to make the changes on the 'affected' site, not the site which is the 'source' of the masked pages / data. If you make the changes there, that site will have all the Google traffic killed as well (and they'll probably want to punch you!)
I recommend that you lead with hard signals and directives which stop Google indexing the pages on the 'affected' site (which is receiving the masked URLs / content and doesn't want them to rank). Once the pages fall out of Google's index, then you swoop in behind and put the robots.txt stuff in to stop them ever coming back
-
Depends on the CMS you use. Many CMS's can click a quick button to not index in Google search.
If that isnt an option, do it through a robots.txt file in webmaster tools.
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
-
Redirect typo domains
Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?
Technical SEO | Jul 10, 2015, 12:18 PM | kuchenchef0 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | Jan 18, 2023, 12:10 PM | tutarmi0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | Mar 8, 2013, 12:15 PM | Morris770 -
Domains
My questions is what to do with old domains we own from a past business. Is it advantages to direct them to the new domain/company or is that going to cause a problem for the new company. They are not in the same industry.
Technical SEO | Jun 17, 2012, 12:31 AM | KeylimeSocial0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | Apr 12, 2012, 5:19 AM | StreetwiseReports1 -
How much impact does bad html coding really have on SEO?
My client has a site that we are trying to optimise. However the code is really pretty bad. There are 205 errors showing when W3C validating. The >title>, , <keywords> tags are appearing twice. There is truly excessive javascript. And everything has been put in tables.</keywords> How much do you think this is really impacting the opportunity to rank? There has been quite a bit of discussion recently along the lines of is on-page SEO impacting anymore. I just want to be sure before I recommend a whole heap of code changes that could cost her a lot - especially if the impact/return could be miniscule. Should it all be cleaned up? Many thanks
Technical SEO | Sep 22, 2015, 5:41 PM | Chammy0 -
Iframes & SEO
I've got a client that wants a site with all content in iFrames. They saw another site they liked & asked if we could do it. Of course we can technically. How big a negative hit would they take with SEO? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it, such as redirects, etc? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | Jul 29, 2011, 7:25 PM | wcksmith0 -
Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?
For our corporate business level domain, we are exploring using a hyphenated sub-domain foir a project. Something like www.go-figure.extreme.com I thought from a user perspective it seems cluttered. The domain length might also be an issue with the new Algorithm big G has launched in recent past. I know with past experience, hyphenated domains usually take longer to index, as they are used by spammers more frequently and can take longer to get out of the supplementary index. Our company site has over 90 million viewers / year, so our brand is well established and traffic isn't an issue. This is for a corporate level project and I didn't have the answer! Will this work? anyone have any experience testing this. Any thoughts will help! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | Sep 13, 2011, 4:13 PM | RobMay0