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. 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
    111719
    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.
    • 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

                                    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

                                    • andyheath

                                      Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google

                                      I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
                                      0
                                    • jmorehouse

                                      Should I disallow all URL query strings/parameters in Robots.txt?

                                      Webmaster Tools correctly identifies the query strings/parameters used in my URLs, but still reports duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for the original URL and the versions with parameters. For example, Webmaster Tools would report duplicates for the following URLs, despite it correctly identifying the "cat_id" and "kw" parameters: /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM
                                      /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?cat_id=87
                                      /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?kw=CROM Additionally, theses pages have self-referential canonical tags, so I would think I'd be covered, but I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs, despite Webmaster Tools not reporting any errors. As I see it, I have two options: Manually tell Google that these parameters have no effect on page content via the URL Parameters section in Webmaster Tools (in case Google is unable to automatically detect this, and I am being penalized as a result). Add "Disallow: *?" to hide all query/parameter URLs from Google. My concern here is that most backlinks include the parameters, and in some cases these parameter URLs outrank the original. Any thoughts?

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jmorehouse
                                      0
                                    • morg45454

                                      Robots.txt - Do I block Bots from crawling the non-www version if I use www.site.com ?

                                      my site uses is set up at http://www.site.com I have my site redirected from non- www to the www in htacess file. My question is... what should my robots.txt file look like for the non-www site? Do you block robots from crawling the site like this? Or do you leave it blank? User-agent: * Disallow: / Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/video-sitemap.xml

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | morg45454
                                      0
                                    • GSO

                                      Should I be using meta robots tags on thank you pages with little content?

                                      I'm working on a website with hundreds of thank you pages, does it make sense to no follow, no index these pages since there's little content on them? I'm thinking this should save me some crawl budget overall but is there any risk in cutting out the internal links found on the thank you pages? (These are only standard site-wide footer and navigation links.) Thanks!

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSO
                                      0
                                    • seo.owl

                                      How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?

                                      Hi, I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap.  We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com. Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap?  In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap? What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file?  Specifically: **example.com/sitemap.xml ** would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)? example.com/robots.xml would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap? blog.example.com/sitemap.xml would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)? blog.example.com/robots.xml does a subdomain need its own robots file? I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it.  I appreciate your help with this.

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo.owl
                                      0
                                    • Blink-SEO

                                      Turning off a subdomain

                                      Hi! I'm currently working with http://www.muchbetteradventures.com/. They have a previous version of the site, http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com, as sub domain on their site. I've noticed a whole bunch of indexing issues which I think are caused by this. The v1 site has several thousand pages and ranks organically for a number of terms, but the pages are not relevant for the business at this time. The main site has just over 100 pages. More than 28,400 urls are currently indexed. We are considering turning off the v1 site and noindexing it. There are no real backlinks to it. The only worry is that by removing it, it will be seen as a massive drop in content. Rankings for the main site are currently quite poor, despite good content, a decent link profile and high domain authority. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO
                                      0
                                    • nicole.healthline

                                      Soft 404's from pages blocked by robots.txt -- cause for concern?

                                      We're seeing soft 404 errors appear in our google webmaster tools section on pages that are blocked by robots.txt (our search result pages). Should we be concerned? Is there anything we can do about this?

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
                                      4
                                    • Webrevolve

                                      Franchise sites on subdomains

                                      I've been asked by a client to optimise a a webpage for a location i.e. London. Turns out that the location is actually a franchise of the main company. When the company launch a new franchise, so far they have simply added a new page to the main site, for example: mysite.co.uk/sub-folder/london They have so far done this for 10 or so franchises and task someone with optimising that page for their main keyword + location. I think I know the answer to this, but would like to get a back up / additional info on it in terms of ranking / seo benefits. I am going to suggest the idea of using a subdomain for each location, example: london.mysite.co.uk Would this be the correct approach. If you think yes, why? Many thanks,

                                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve
                                      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.