Does main domain get PR from subdomains

[fahad direct]

I have developed a site having 10 subdomains and i have heard Google treats subdomain as an independent domain and PR of subdomains are not transferred collectively to main domain.

Is that right? Should i change my urls structure and put them in folders instead of subdomains?

[tedster]

The key thing to understand is that domains don't have PR - only individual URLs do. In addition, PR is not inherited, it is "voted" by one URL linking to another.

So whether one URL gets PR from another depends on the links between them. If pages on a subdomain are linked to pages from the main domain, the PR transfer (or vote) works pretty much the same as if those URLs were on the main domain and mutually linked in the same way.

[freejung]

Right, but what about domain-level metrics like authority and trust? I suspect that, at least under some circumstances, subdomains can benefit from the authority of the main domain. But does the main domain benefit from authority of subdomains? Hard to say...

But yes, as far as pure PR is concerned, just link from the subdomains to the main domain and PR will be transferred just as if they were subdirectories.

[Rlilly]

What happens if the subdomain is more popular(higher PR) than the main domian?

From what i see with my blog on a subdomain (blog.,,,,,.com), google is treating them dependantely. for example some searches will be: first result from domain, second from subdomain and then "show more results from"

[freejung]

Rlilly, yes, one of the sites I manage has a blog on a subdomain and I have the same results -- for many terms where there is a page on the main site and a page on the blog, they will be listed as you described. I've also seen SERPs where they are listed independently, however, it seems to depend on how well each page ranks for the term. If one page massively outranks the other, they will be displayed separately.

It seemed to me that when we launched the blog, it began to rank faster and better than I would have expected with a completely new domain, but that's just a feeling, not backed by hard data.

[fahad direct]

Great thanks for all replies. I will continue my URLs structure.