Exclude root url in robots.txt ?

[mikehenze]

Hi,

I have the following setup:

www.example.com/nl
www.example.com/de
www.example.com/uk
etc
www.example.com is 301'ed to www.example.com/nl

But now www.example.com is ranking instead of www.example.com/nl
Should is block www.example.com in robots.txt so only the subfolders are being ranked?
Or will i lose my ranking by doing this.

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

If you put disallow: / in your robots.txt file, you will tell bots not to crawl the homepage plus ALL interior pages.  You'd be shooting yourself in the foot (or head, really).

Are you sure the redirect is setup properly?  Is it definitely a 301 redirect, or maybe a 302 (temporary)?  How long ago did you implement the redirect?  If the 301 redirect is setup properly, and you're still seeing the homepage in the index, you might just need to wait for it to drop out.

[mikehenze]

Thanks for answering Philip,

Yes i really used a 301.
I used it in .htaccess
And i have set this up before lauching the site, so i should be good from the beginning.

The site was launched last friday.
When searching for the brand name it shows up as example.com
When searching for my main keywords it shows example.com/ned/landing-page

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

The site just launched?  It sounds like I am right, you just need to give Google some time to drop the page from the index.

When you find the homepage in the index, and you click the link, do you get redirected?  If so, Google will eventually drop it.

[mikehenze]

Yes, when clicking the link in google you get redirected.
I will wait some time.

Thank you.