Root Level Domain Vs. Subdirectory Domain

[Born_User]

I have the opportunity to buy one of 2 domains. The first domain, a nice PR6, has many backlinks, several of which are PR7 backlinks dating back to 2001. The page has a good history and lots of the backlinks are several .edu's and several archived news stories that will never go away.

The only problem is... it's not a root level domain. In other words, the site looks like: www.domain.com/subdirectory

Now... I have another potential purchase of www.domain2.com. Nearly all the specs are the same (PR6, archived backlinks, good site history, etc).

All you experts out there... do the spiders see these differently? Is one inherently more valuable than the other?

[jdMorgan]

> www.domain.com/subdirectory

That's not a domain, it's a subdirectory. As such, you won't 'own' it, whoever is the registered owner of 'www.domain.com' will own it-- You'll have no 'legal' protection if the owner decides to delete that subdirectory. So either you're buying the whole domain, or you're not. And in this case, you're not.

Maybe I misunderstood something here, but I'd be quite suspicious of anyone offering to sell me a 'domain' called www.domain.com/subdirectory.

Jim

[Born_User]

It was my misnomer. I erroneously called it a domain. It's nothing more than a hosting agreement for $x.xx per month to allow me to post a site at that subdirectory.

My question is...

as far as google and other spiders are concerned, will my pages present as well on one as on the other? Aside from the fact of actually owning the domain, I can move the content from one place to the other, and the root domain isn't going anywhere.

As far as the spiders are concerned, is there any difference?

[jdMorgan]

Search engines spider pages and don't really care what the URL is. However, directories such as ODP and their clones -- including Google directory -- usually won't accept deep links into a site. So, I'd be concerned about getting your own directory listings and the resultant PR, as well as the serious 'control issue' of not having your own domain. If you ever had to walk away from the domain hosting your subdirectory, you would be in very bad shape; the domain would still exist, and the domain owner could use all of your existing PR/link-pop -- maybe even against you (your new site would have to compete against your old site).

Sharing a domain comes with all kinds of other problems: Who controls/maintains robots.txt? What if you need to use server-side code to redirect URLs? Where does your domain-based e-mail go? What about 'branding' your site? - Move your site, and lose your branding!

Get your own domain, and host it based on services and server capabilities, not price alone. Cheap hosting and domain sharing are nothing but trouble and will cost you dearly, IMO.

Jim

[Born_User]

Jim,

That did it. Thanks for the good advice. I was teetering on the edge of a bad decision letting the pricetag make my mind up for me. Thanks for yanking me down to reality.