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I currently use a free subdomain, https://vandenberg.us.to, but I'm having trouble getting it indexed by Google. From what I understand, Google should treat subdomains as completely different websites from the root domain, but when I use "fetch as Google" in the webmaster console it fetches us.to.

behold, the proof is in the pudding. Or in this image

Is this anything that's within my control? Could I solve this by using a different robots.txt or by uploading a sitemap? Or does us.to just not allow their subdomains to get indexed?

As per request of Goyllo, here's the response details. Unfortunately it's not possible to copy the text easily, so a screenshot is all I can give. (Click to make it readable.)

HTTP response headers

Other information I just realized might be important is that I registered this domain through FreeDNS. Therefore it should only be a DNS record, and the site us.to should not even be touched, as it's on a different IP.

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    Click on fetching option and see the HTTP response (I mean weather it is 200 or 301 response) and add those details to your question for better understating. Look's like your service provider automatically redirect only Googlebot and not others.
    – Goyllo
    Dec 31, 2016 at 10:53
  • @Goyllo I can't add it from phone, but it's a 200 from us.to. I'll add it later.
    – Daniël van den Berg
    Dec 31, 2016 at 10:56
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    This doesn't make much sense from a Google perspective, so I would assume your site is doing some kind of user-agent detection (as Goyllo suggests)? However, if it is, it doesn't appear to be simply checking the User-Agent header - as I am unable to make it switch. (If it is checking for Googlebot then the correct way would be to also check the IP address.)
    – MrWhite
    Dec 31, 2016 at 12:26
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    They are doing some kind of cloacking, because they, only redirect to Googlebot and not real users. I will suggest stay away from them, And us.to also provide the URL shorter service, and I highly doubt they also do other kind of redirection (to affliate website) to earn some money. Discuss with them about this issue or leave them.
    – Goyllo
    Dec 31, 2016 at 17:40
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    It seems I may have found a problem. My site is apparently not working on HTTP, only HTTPS. I'll fix this issue next year somewhere, and report back whether it works.
    – Daniël van den Berg
    Dec 31, 2016 at 19:51

1 Answer 1

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Your domain hasn't been published to Google

FreeDNS seems to treat Google differently. From that FAQ post:

No subdomains created via the shared domain system are visible to Google. You must own the domain itself that you are creating a subdomain off of to have it visible to Google by default.

That includes yours. It appears that in order to make your site visible to Google, you'd have to contact them first. It's an unusual policy as it seems to make those subdomains rather useless (and I'd be interested in finding out why they do this at all! I would hazard a guess that it's cookie-hijacking related, but blocking Google by default doesn't exactly solve that)

If you just want a free domain which works properly with Google on FreeDNS or some other free DNS provider, check out freenom. A quick search on there provided 3 results which are actually shorter than your shared domain anyway.

Aside in response to comments above: As you're only using DNS services from them, i.e. your server isn't under their control, it's essentially not possible for your HTTPS only problem to be the cause.

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