Hyppothetical subdomain question

[Unknown Webmaster]

Will Google treat a page on a subdomain the same as a page on the "main" domain if there are a lot of interlinking between the two sites, and there are only a few subdomains on that domain?

Basically what tutsplus.com , net.tutplus.com and photo.tutsplus.com does, but for a smaller site and with more generous interlinking.

I'm not looking to manipulate anything, I'm just curious if I'm totally off base in assuming that there wouldn't be a significant difference between using a subdomain and a regular folder.

[Michael Martinez]

For that particular domain, Google appears to be treating at least some if not all of the subdomains as separate sites in its search results.

Be careful not to read too much into that. Google has said in its own special, oblique way that there are probably layers of distinction between "sites" and between "hosts".

A host is any root domain or subdomain. In practice a host may be its own site, a family of sites, or part of a larger site.

The search engines look for clues in site and page structure to help them figure out if the hosts are intended to be separate sites or an integrated megasite.

If you're concerned about what might get a site penalized, I and other people in the SEO community have found that Google seems to distrust sites that add too many subdomains too fast. But that seems to depend on the purpose of the subdomains.

On the other hand, Google really likes subdomains that have their own unique, distinctive content. So you might create a site with the following subdomains:

• www . example . com (this is the ROOT DOMAIN, but it is still a HOST)
• blog.example.com
• news.example.com
• images.example.com
• store.example.com

Each section would have its own distinct function and content. Google and other search engines usually tolerate this kind of division of content, even if there is some cross-linking between the hosts (subdomains + root domain).

However, remember that each host will need inbound links. You CAN build those links on the root domain and pass all your PageRank through there -- to a large extent that is what I do with Xenite.Org, my personal site, although some of my subdomains have attracted their own external links.

You may find it takes longer to get all the subdomains indexed and ranking even for long tail brand-value keywords. Most people in the SEO community agree it's generally more productive to organize your content within folders on the root domain.

The bottom line: it's an acceptable practice when done because there is distinct value in each host (subdomain).