Is it true that google does not promote the vanity domains?

Are there more chances for foo.com/widget than widget.foo.com?

[jorj]

One of my client thrown this question to me and I had no answer. It is very important to come up with some answer to this because we're going to start a whole new set of sites/pages and I wouldn't want to start it wrong.

Thanks

[jadebox]

To search engines widget.domain.com and domain.com are two distinct domains.

The SEs may, however, do some additional duplicate checking between such domains since, for example, www.domain.com and domain.com are often the same site. But, in general, you should treat subdomains as different domains.

-- Roger