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At the beginning of February (11-12th), I was splitting my site, which consisted of two very different projects, into each having its own subdomain.

My problem is that after two months, Google keeps ranking my main domain for keywords specific to one of the subdomains (i.e., I was and still am ranked second for very specific keywords). When searching for these, Google is still ranking me second, but linking to my main domain even though it hasn't had this content for the past two months.

I'm trying to get it to link instead to my subdomain, or a page on it. I've already setup a 301 redirect from www.example.com/cazy to research.example.com/cazy

I can't indicate through Google Webmaster Tools that my site has changed addresses because I've split the previous content into two different subdomains.

Has anyone tried something similar and solved this issue, or have any idea how I can get ranked on my subdomain instead of my main domain?

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  • Have you setup the 301 redirects from OLD URLS to NEW URLS?
    – Simon Hayter
    Apr 20, 2016 at 7:42
  • Yes, the redirect is set up as explained. I'm not sure why my main domain is still the one ranking when the content is not there anymore
    – Alexander
    Apr 20, 2016 at 12:41
  • How many URLS are we talking about? If the number is in the hundreds, or thousands it can take much longer than a couple of months to reflect the changes in the index. Its not uncommon for sites with huge indexes to wait up a entire year, it depends on volume / quality. Google will update the index after a few crawls to the effected page. If a low number then you have a problem with your redirects, which can't say more since you haven't displayed your redirect code.
    – Simon Hayter
    Apr 20, 2016 at 13:09
  • My main problem is that example.com is ranking in the search, the very homepage, I can't redirect example.com as it still functions as my own website. The two projects I had on it on different pages in different subdirectories, is now moved to two different subdomains and there are redirects from these like example.com/test to test.example.com. Why doesn't example.com loose ranking on the keywords when the content is not there anymore, but on the subdomain? Both projects are less than 50 pages.
    – Alexander
    Apr 20, 2016 at 23:11
  • Google doesn't drop pages easily, nor when first detected. It takes several crawls to do so. So, if these pages are not regarded as important by Google, or they have been stale for years (never changed) then it could take a little longer for Google to return to those pages. Google does this to allow time for admins to correct the issue, if its not intended, and because they have limited resources. Again, it'd be useful if you shared your code how are you redirecting.
    – Simon Hayter
    Apr 21, 2016 at 8:14

1 Answer 1

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I did a search today where I was not logged in to Chrome, and it listed my sub-domain and my main domain on the first page. I thought this was weird, why now, so suddenly after this question.

I didn't realize that I had turned on personal search results for Google, which affected the results I saw. Turning off personal search results for Google gave me the expected results with my sub-domain now ranking for the specific keywords.

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