Any risks involved in removing a sub-domain from search index or completely taking down? Ranking impact?
-
Hi all,
One of our sub-domains has thousands of indexed pages but traffic is very less and irrelevant. There are links between this sub-domain to other sub domains of ours. We are planning to take this subdomain completely. What happens if so? Google responds for this with a ranking change?
Thanks
-
If the sub domain targets keywords not targeted in the rest of the website then rankings will slip.
I would 301 all webpages to relevant pages on your main site. Any important keywords should be monitored. You should crelated pages with content from the sub domain to maintain these keywords.
If traffic is non existent just 301 them.
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
-
Competitor's new site ranking with out much keywords - How?
Hi all, One of our competitors have recently redesigned their website with new content. Now I can see much less keywords in the content. And page title also changed away from keywords. Still this is ranking at good position. How? Previously they used to have much landing pages with related keywords which some of them are missing now. Still I wonder why this website is ranking high? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does moving Server (IP) affect rankings?
I work for a pretty large company with an established web domain with thousands of pages. We are working on a new website and they talked about moving the site onto a new server. What is the impact ranking wise of going to a new server? Does Google care so long as it's the same domain, or is there some equity lost? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | ScottOlson0 -
Could our drop in organic rankings have been caused by improper mobile site set-up?
Site: 12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases. Background: The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year. While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched. Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance. Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css). -These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain. -We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page. This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google. -Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic. This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily. The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords. In these cases, the "loop" would be broken. Is this a cause for concern? Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected? Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings? -Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page. -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly? -Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration? -Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues? -Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls? Am I missing or overlooking something? While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format. The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions. If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Greg
Web Design | | seagreen0 -
Pagerank and SERP rankings downhill after site update
Our site underwent a major update in September 2012. We put the entire site in WordPress and did away with our static pages. Then, in February 2013, we moved our shopping cart pages from a subdomain to our main domain (in WordPress). In both cases, we had to implement a massive 301 redirect through htaccess as most of our URLs changed with the update. Our site consists of the shopping cart (WooCommerce), blog, and supporting pages. We noticed traffic starting to drop around the last week of November (2012) and it has steadily declined ever since. None of our shop pages have a pagerank with virtually all them showing a gray bar with question mark. Only the shop homepage has some pagerank -- that too from 4 previously to 2 now. Some of the words we used to rank very well for before, we don't even show in the first five pages anymore. At first, we thought it was a temporary situation that would self correct over time, but it doesn't seem to get better at all. All said, we have lost over 80% of our traffic from Google organic. Upon repeated reviews, the 301 redirects seem to be done correctly and we don't see any serious mistakes that could cause such a huge drop. So the question is are we missing something? Are we not looking at the right places? Any ideas where we might start looking? We're simply looking for ideas and a fresh perspective.
Web Design | | bizmanuals0 -
Is this causing me to drop in rank?
Today I noticed I was dropping (pretty big jump) for some keywords, so I checked out the source of a page, and noticed that my source code has two canonical urls. One to the home page, and one to the /page-title. I just changed themes recently, and the dropped happened after I changed themes. Is this what's causing me to drop in rank for certain terms? You can view the source here: http://noahsdad.com/physical-characteristics/
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
Google search issue with exact domain
We had a site from Feb-2011 to Nov-2011 at the domain amcoexterminating.com. The site was pure HTML/CSS and the daily unique visitors steadily increased over that time. So all was fine. We then moved the site to a CMS (Joomla) on Dec. 6th. From that day forward, the daily visitors went into the tank. Before the move, if you typed "amcoexterminating.com" or "amco exterminating" into Google search, the site would be the first result (as you'd expect since those are the words that make up the actua domain). But we tried this yesterday and the site did not come up at all. NOT GOOD. It would work in Yahoo or Bing, but not in Google. So obviously, the problem with Google search directly affected the daily visitors. We just checked Webmaster tools yesterday (yes, this should have been done sooner, lesson learned) and it said "Site has severe health issues - Important page blocked by robots.txt". It listed the "important" page URL and it was just a link to an image. Regardless, I wiped out the Joomla created robots.txt file and added a new one and made it just say... User-agent: *Allow: / About 14 hours later, after the new robots.txt file was recognized by Google, the "severe health" message went away. However if I search in Google for "amcoexterminating.com", it still doesn't show up and the client is concerned (as they should be). Do you think the search engines just need more time to refresh? If so, once it refreshes, should the site show up first again right away? Or is it possible the robots.txt file had nothing to do with the issue? If so, what other things could I check into that might cause Google search to not find a site even if you search for exact domain name? Please share any and all things I should look into as I need to get this site showing in Google search again (as it was before moving to the CMS). Thanks!
Web Design | | MarathonMS0 -
Google indexing Quickview popups
Hi Guys I can't seem to find any info on this. Maybe you can help. We are using xcart as our shopping cart. When you land on a product page you have the option to "Quickview" the item. Google is picking up the quickview urls" and the vote on product urls. I have added the following to the robots.txt file but not sure if this will work. Any help on this would be great. Disallow: /?popup=Y Disallow: /?mode=add Undesired URL Examples: <colgroup><col width="735"></colgroup>
Web Design | | fasctimseo
| http://www.funlove.com/store/6_Pack_Shooter_Beer_Belt/?mode=add_vote&vote=60 | <colgroup><col width="735"></colgroup>
| http://www.funlove.com/store/6_pack_shooter_beer_belt/?popup=Y |0 -
Stuck with domain: www.kumficars.co.uk
Hi community, I was hoping you could help me. I have a website which I'm running for a client, www.kumficars.co.uk, and it's not featuring at all on google for the primary keyword: Taxi Knutsford I have absolutely no idea why. I've produced a campaign report and am acting on it now, but even that didn't pull much up other than a missing meta description tag, which I'm updating now. Other than that, I can't see any reason why the website shouldn't rank - the competition isn't even difficult! Can anyone shed some light please?
Web Design | | ArtifexDesign0