How do I remove subdomains from Google search?
 by Casey Markee

How do I remove subdomains from Google search?

  • I manage a site with dozens of subdomains and my client wants them removed from the search results. I removed the main site but none of the subdomains budged. What do I need to do to get all of these subdomains out of Google's search results?

Answer: Unfortunately, we don't have an easy fix for you. Google views domains and subdomains as completely unique sites in many aspects. One such area is in how they treat and process URL removal requests from their index.

For you to remove each of these subdomains from Google search you have to first verify them each in Google Webmasters Tools, then remove them individually. Since each subdomain has its own document root you also will have to ensure that each subdomain's robots.txt file disallows its related subdomain completely.

According to the Google Webmasters Guidelines, site owners must do the following before submitting a removal request on domains and subdomains:

"To remove a directory or your entire site, you must ensure that the pages you want to remove have been blocked using a robots.txt file. Returning a 404 isn't enough, because it's possible for a directory to return a 404 status code, but still serve out files underneath it. Using robots.txt to block a directory ensures that all of its children are disallowed as well."

Thus, to prevent robots from crawling your site, add the following directive to your robots.txt file for each target subdomain:

User-agent: *
Disallow:...

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