Rankings of Subdomains vs. Main Domain
-
Here's a puzzler...
Our main domain (www.ides.com) doesn't appear in Google (but does on Bing and other engines). We think this is due to duplicate content which we're fixing.
However our website's subdomains continue to appear prominently in SERPs, even on Google - here are some examples:
- IDES Prospector = prospector.ides.com
- IDES = support.ides.com
- Cycolac FR15 = catalog.ides.com
Why would Google penalize a main domain and its subdomains?
-
Maybe the robots problem fixes everything for you. I hope it does.
I always use the same kind of robots.txt -> as short as possible and as clear as possible. Archives and everything are allowed and so far (knocking on a piece of natural wood) never has something like this occurred. Again hope this helps your site
kind regards
Jarno
-
Thanks Jarno,
Good to know from your geographic location. Looking at analytics shows traffic is down about 60% from Google visits originating from the U.S. to our main domain.
The last ia_archiver blocks an archiving website - saw it in Bruce Clay's robots.txt (http://www.bruceclay.com/robots.txt).
But we are looking at cleaning up our robots.txt file so it's nice 'n tidy. There are things in there that can now be removed, so thank you for the reminding tip!
No errors in Google Webmaster. Did receive a message on Nov. 5th saying http://www.ides.com/: Big traffic change for top URL but no reasons listed.
-
Nathan,
i just checked it but Google has listed your website:
If you were truly penalized i don't think i would get the results I'm getting now. Have you checked your robots.txt file for any strange markings? strange signs or number sequences? When i look at it it looks like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /ArtScape/
Disallow: /aspnet_client/
Disallow: /costmate/CMHelp.aspx
Disallow: /demos/eplasturgy/
Disallow: /downloads/
Disallow: /email/
Disallow: /grades/
Disallow: /graveyard/
Disallow: /Gulf_War/
Disallow: //info/manufacturers/
Disallow: /LanapCaptcha.aspx
Disallow: /plasticsmarketplace/(S
Disallow: /processors/
Disallow: /PWeb
Disallow: /pweb/
Disallow: /news/
Disallow: /newsletters/archive/
Disallow: /newsletters/free/
Disallow: /newsletters/x5/
Disallow: /questions/
Disallow: /registration/
Disallow: /resinpricing/history.aspx
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tools/CMHelp.aspx
Disallow: /thunderstone/
Disallow: /Web_Solutions.html
Sitemap: http://app.wistia.com/sitemaps/8875.xml
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /Maybe this last statement is confusing Google? i have never seen a ia_archiver disallow root statement before. Is it the right syntaxis?
What are your webmastertools saying? Any strange errors or messages?
Kind Regards
Jarno
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
-
Blog not ranking for my name
Hi everyone. I'm new here so apologies if I'm not asking an appropriate question - just let me know! Can anyone help me figure out why my blog (https://www.jamescrowley.net/) isn't ranking at all for my name? I've run it through the standard Moz audit tools and it hasn't picked up any major issues. It ranks fine for my name plus " CTO", but doesn't appear anywhere in the top 50 without that qualifier. I realise there are many other 'James Crowley's to compete with but weirdly even my GitHub profile page appears to rank higher (https://github.com/jamescrowley) I moved the domain a while back (18 months+) and I used to rank highly, but it never seems to have recovered (all the standard redirects are in place, and told Google at the time about the move). Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | james.crowley0 -
Recently re-built our site and changed domain. Now I want to go back to old domain - it it a bad idea?
About a year ago I rebuilt our website and changed our domain name. We rent villas in Tuscany, we used to be 'invitationtotuscany.com'. Then I started doing the same in Provence, and in the italian lakes, so i had further sites called invitationtoprovence.com and invitationtotheitalianlakes.com. But maintaining them was awkward and I wanted to have one site. So I put them all onto invitationto.com and did 301s from the old domains and sites. Now I'd dropped off organic search results and I've also realised that invitationto.com is far less clear as a business address. My inclination is to go back to invitationtotuscany.com - Tuscany is still 80% of our business and have the other areas in there too - optimised for SEO for Provence etc. I'm being told its a really bad idea to change domain, 301 the old one, and then revert to the original domain. But I'm suffering anyway, so I wonder if I sjhouldn't just bite the bullet. A lot of my old good backlinks still point to invitationtotuscany.com (BBC, Sunday Times, etc) and the DA is 33 against 22 on the new one.. All help gratefully received! : )
Technical SEO | | DanWrightson0 -
Moving from a subdomain to subfolder
Hello, I am currently working on a site that is leveraging multiple subdomains. I wanted to see if it suggested to migrate them into subfolders. One of the subdomains is a .shop and the other is location specific. Thanks, T
Technical SEO | | Tucker_100 -
Keyword domain usage
Hi I have a client who wants some advice on the following and I haven't come up with anything decent yet. So wanted to throw it out here. They own a domain like soccershoes.com which also houses their web site. They have now bought ussoccershoes.com because this US based search term is more popular than simply soccer shoes. How can they utilise this new domain effectively to drive traffic to their main web site? Thanks for any input.
Technical SEO | | yolkcreative0 -
Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain
My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AscendLearning0 -
Which carries more weight Google page rank or Alexa Rank?
And how come do I see websites with Google PR of Zero and Alexa Page Rank in the top Thousands rank?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Different domains
Firstly apologies for the very brief question as I am mainly looking for your thoughts as opposed to specific help about a specific problem. I am working on a site which has two sepreate domains and within one domain, two sub domains. The two different sites both havea high page rank, PR6 each, one is the corporate site and the other is the company blog. There are also two sub domains within the corporate site, again both domains have high pr and tons of content. My question is would it be better to consolidate all the assets under one domain or is it better to keep the sites sepreate, from an seo perspective that is.
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0 -
Domain extension is a ranking factor? Does it change de value of my SEO
Im trying to find a good domain for my business, but a domain for my country ".com.br" with exact keyword is not available any more. I want to know if i buy a domain name with other extension like www.mykeyword.info or .biz is take bad effect in my SEO. Or it doesn't matter? If so, wich extension domain is good for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ex20