undefined
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
  • 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. On-Page Optimization
  4. How do we handle sitemaps in robots.txt when multiple domains point to same physical location?

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.

How do we handle sitemaps in robots.txt when multiple domains point to same physical location?

On-Page Optimization
2
8
9.3k
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.
  • nordicnetproducts
    nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 3:57 AM

    we have www.mysite.net, www.mysite.se, www.mysite.fi and so on. all of these domains point to the same physical location on our webserver, and we replace texts given back to client depending on which domain he/she requested.

    My problem is this: How do i configure sitemaps in robots.txt when robots.txt is used by multiple domains? If I for instance put the rows

    Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapNet.xml
    Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapSe.xml

    in robots.txt, would that result in some cross submission error?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • nordicnetproducts
      nordicnetproducts @nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 7:05 AM Aug 4, 2011, 7:05 AM

      Thanks for your help René!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ReneReinholdt
        ReneReinholdt @nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 6:22 AM Aug 4, 2011, 6:22 AM

        yup 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • nordicnetproducts
          nordicnetproducts @nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 6:10 AM Aug 4, 2011, 6:08 AM

          Yes, I mean GTW of course :).

          A folder for each site would definitely make some things easier, but it would also mean more work every time we need to republish the site or make configurations.

          Did I understand that googlelink correctly in that if we have verified ownership in GWT for all involved domains cross-site submission in robots.txt was okay? I guess google will think its okay anyway.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ReneReinholdt
            ReneReinholdt @nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 7:04 AM Aug 4, 2011, 5:46 AM

            actually google has the answer, right here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75712

            I always try to do what google recommends even though something might work just as well.. just to be on the safe side 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • ReneReinholdt
              ReneReinholdt @nordicnetproducts last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 7:04 AM Aug 4, 2011, 5:38 AM

              you can't submit a sitemap in GA so I'm guessing you mean GWT 🙂

              Whether or not you put it in the robots.txt shouldn't be a problem. since in each sitemap, the urls would look something like this:

              Sitemap 1:<url><loc>http:/yoursite.coim/somepage.html</loc></url>

              Sitemap 2:<url><loc>http:/yoursite.dk/somepage.html</loc></url>

              I see no need to filter what sitemap is shown to the crawler. If your .htaccess is set-up to redirect traffic from the TLD (top level domain eg .dk .com ex.) to the correct pages. Then the sitemaps shouldn't be a problem.

              The best solution would be: to have a web in web. (a folder for each site on the server) and then have the htaccess redirect to the right folder. in this folder you have a robots.txt and a sitemap for that specific site. that way all your problems will be gone in a jiffy. It will be just like managing different 3 sites. even though it isn't.

              I am no ninja with .htaccess files but I understand the technology behind it and know what you can do in them. for a how to do it guide, ask google thats what I allways do when I need to goof around in the htaccess. I hope it made sense. 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • nordicnetproducts
                nordicnetproducts @ReneReinholdt last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 5:26 AM Aug 4, 2011, 5:26 AM

                Thanks for your response René!

                Thing is we already submit the sitemaps in google analytics, but this SEO company we hired wants us to put the sitemaps in robots.txt as well.

                The .htaccess idea sounds good, as long as google or someone else dont think we are doing some cross-site submission error (as described here http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php#submit_robots)

                ReneReinholdt nordicnetproducts 5 Replies Last reply Aug 4, 2011, 7:05 AM Reply Quote 0
                • ReneReinholdt
                  ReneReinholdt last edited by Aug 4, 2011, 7:03 AM Aug 4, 2011, 4:56 AM

                  I see no need to use robots.txt for that. use Google and Bings webmaster tools. Here you have each domain registered  and can submit sitemaps to them for each domain.

                  If you want to make sure that your sitemaps are not crawled by a bot for a wrong language. I would set it up in the .htaccess to test for the entrance domain and make sure to redirect to the right file. Any bot will enter a site just like a browser so it needs to obey the server. so if the server tells it to go somewhere it will.

                  the robots.txt can't by it self, do what you want. The server can however. But in my opinion using bing and google webmaster tools should do the trick.

                  nordicnetproducts 1 Reply Last reply Aug 4, 2011, 5:26 AM Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    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

                  • rajam

                    Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?

                    Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.

                    On-Page Optimization | Aug 7, 2017, 7:41 PM | rajam
                    0
                  • NickG-123

                    Best Tool for Retrieving Multiple URL Word Counts in Bulk?

                    I am doing some content analysis with over 200 URLs to go through! Does anybody know of, or can recommend any bulk on-page word count checkers which would help with the heavy lifting? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

                    On-Page Optimization | Jul 11, 2016, 12:34 PM | NickG-123
                    0
                  • heymarshall

                    How to Handle duplicate pages/titles in Wordpress

                    The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,

                    On-Page Optimization | Feb 12, 2015, 8:13 PM | heymarshall
                    1
                  • Kotkov

                    Right way to block google robots from ppc landing pages

                    What is the right way to completely block seo robots from my adword landing pages? Robots.txt does not work really good for that, as far I know. Adding metatags noindex nofollow on the other side will block adwords robot as well. right? Thank you very much, Serge

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 2, 2012, 8:58 PM | Kotkov
                    0
                  • csmithal

                    Hyphens in Domain Name

                    I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!

                    On-Page Optimization | Jul 20, 2012, 9:15 PM | csmithal
                    0
                  • DisMedia

                    How do you block development servers with robots.txt?

                    When we create client websites the urls are client.oursite.com.  Google is indexing theses sites and attaching to our domain.  How can we stop it with robots.txt?  I've heard you need to have the robots file on both the main site and the dev sites... A code sample would be groovy.  Thanks, TR

                    On-Page Optimization | May 11, 2012, 5:56 AM | DisMedia
                    0
                  • MikeDelaCruz77

                    E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.

                    Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!

                    On-Page Optimization | Aug 29, 2011, 3:05 PM | MikeDelaCruz77
                    0
                  • eyepaq

                    301 redirect (www.domain.com/index to www.domain.com)

                    Hello, Please let me know what are the exact right steps in order to get rid of the duplicate content issues related with: www.domain.com/index.html same as www.domain.com  without creating an infinite loop. Do you have a step by step guide posted within seomoz including 301 redirect for non www to www for all urls and index.whatever to main domain name without going into a infinite loop ? btw how to you spot the loop ? is it obvious like never ending refresh of the home page ? thanks a lot !

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 2, 2011, 2:00 PM | eyepaq
                    2

                  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
                  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.