How does Google view something.somesite.com?

[dickbaker]

It's possible that, in order to get out from under Panda, I would have to split my site into three different parts: the ecommerce section; the informational section; and the advertising directory section. It's possible that, right now, having three different focuses is confusing Google.

I was thinking that it might be less confusing to visitors if the URL were along the lines of ecommerce.mysite.com, information.mysite.com and directory.mysite com, rather than having three completely different URL's.

Does anyone know if Google regards those type of URL's as separate entities, or would they still be seen as one site?

Thanks for any replies.

[Shatner]

I've been thinking that too but... if I take all the pages in something.com/stuff/ and move it to something.moved.com/stuff/ or even newsection.com/stuff/ I'm not sure how to handle it. Do I redirect the old URL or just use canonicals or what?

[netmeg]

I haven't really seen any advantage or disadvantage to subdomains as opposed to folders in search; but there can be ramifications for your analytics unless you set it up to track across subdomains.

[aakk9999]

I was thinking that it might be less confusing to visitors if the URL were along the lines of ecommerce.mysite.com, information.mysite.com and directory.mysite com, rather than having three completely different URL's.

I presume that by "completely different URLs" you meant three separate domains (versus creating new subdomains of the current pandalised domain).

I haven't really seen any advantage or disadvantage to subdomains as opposed to folders in search; but there can be ramifications for your analytics unless you set it up to track across subdomains.

I think that the OP reason behind splitting the site here is different one. If the main site is pandalised, with a suspect being "site focus" and "site classification", then from what I gather OP is thinking is that splitting the site in three different sites, each on a different subdomain (or domain), will give each of these sites more narrow "focus" and easier "classification", hence perhaps coming out of Panda not just for the spun-off new sites, but also helping the main site recovering from Panda as its focus would be more targeted.

The question here is - if the split is done over three subdomains, would Google still see these three subdomains somehow as "one site" and therefore they would remain pandalised, or would subdomains be treated as a completely separate narrowly focused sites, giving it perhaps a chance to get out of Panda. If the whole purpose of split is solely to have separate more narrow focus on each of the sites, and there is even small chance that G. would treat three separate subdomains as "one site" with regards to classification and focus, then it would be safer to choose three different domains (even though as dickbaker says, for the visitor it would make more sense to have subdomains).

I am none the wiser here with regards to splitting into subdomains versus splitting onto three separate domains. There has been other threads some time ago on whether subdomain inherits any trust, etc from domain and not only the opinions differ, but even if there was a concensus, this may not be how G. now sees subdomains & domains in Panda view.

With regards to handling it (canonicals versus redirect), if you use canonicals, this implies you are leaving these pages on the original domain too. If I was doing this move purely in attempt to get out of Panda, then I would not leave pages on the original site (assumes the use of canonical), instead, I would remove these pages and redirect them to the spun-off site.

If you truly want to move number of pages from the current site to a new domain/subdomain, then 301 should be used on a page to page basis. You could use this excercise in the same time to get rid of low value pages, by either combining some pages together (if it makes sense) or by just dropping them and leave the main site return 404 (or even better, 410).

Also, before deciding on such a move, inbound links must be analysed. If the section you are moving does not have many inbound links and relies on PR flow from the home page and/or other strong pages that now remain on the main site, then the new site that is a spin-off section of the old site may have very low inbound link power.

And lastly, I am not sure how the current site interlinks between the subject sections and if there is a current heavy interlinking, whether this would have an impact on split or not as there would be lots of links going to spun-off site(s).

[dickbaker]

aakk9999, the latter part of your post describes my thinking, and the quandary. Interior pages have links from other sites, and splitting the site into three different sites would negate the value of many of those links. I don't know if doing a 301 on pages moved would keep the link value or not.

I think that with Panda, Google is lowering the value of less focused sites, and that's the rationale for my thoughts about splitting things up. Doing so without any incoming links, though, would be starting over again with the spun off pages.

[aakk9999]

I don't know if doing a 301 on pages moved would keep the link value or not.

Implementing 301 in one hit (no chain redirects) will transfer link power, although MC said there is small loss of transferred PR in that case. So the spun-off site would have incoming link power in that case.

But the "left over" of the current site would lose PR flow that are currently coming to pages you intend to split out. Mind you, if the current site is pandalised and hence dropped in ranking, then perhaps you have not much to lose here.

[kidder]

I haven't really seen any advantage or disadvantage to subdomains as opposed to folders in search; but there can be ramifications for your analytics unless you set it up to track across subdomains.

I like using subs when you have a section of a website that might not be as SEO friendly as the main part of the website. An example might be classified ads section where content expires quickly and generates a lot of 404's - Sometimes its just easy to use a sub for this sort of thing and save your self the brain damage.

[Shatner]

>>aakk9999, the latter part of your post describes my thinking, and the quandary. Interior pages have links from other sites, and splitting the site into three different sites would negate the value of many of those links. I don't know if doing a 301 on pages moved would keep the link value or not.

This is my concern too. I can't just 404 them, too many inbound links at stake but I'm not sure I really understand what the consequences are of doing a 301 redirect on them all. Particularly since it may be 10,000 pages or so.

Has anyone ever tried anything like this?

[Pjman]

I have (had) tons (100s) of sub-domains that were always treated as separate entities in the past. I lease my subdomains out to a hosting service and they allow users to create web pages under our subdomains.

This time last year. I noticed a severe penalty on my root domain.

I went over to G's forum and asked if anybody had any ideas. John Mu (Mr. G Forum) cited the subdomains of some user that created spammy stuff.

I separated the root domain and moved the subdomains to a different root domain. Within 2 months every thing returned to normal.

So Yes, sub-domains affect root domains. I never would have thought it true.

[numnum]

Here are the questions that the OP is raising, as I understand them:

* Does the algo treat each of two subdomains discretely for the purpose of determining the narrowness of a site's focus? (Has G explicitly addressed this question?)

* All else being equal, will a site that focuses narrowly on "square blue widgets" or "round blue widgets" do better in the SERPs for its key phrase than the more broadly focused site on square widgets? (Cutts has suggested so, hasn't he?) Of course, as already pointed out here, all else might not be equal -- for example, if the pages involving square blue widgets have enjoyed more and/or higher quality backlinks than the pages involving round blue widgets.

I would add the following query: Would bifurcating the site into two subdomains enhance the relevance and/or CPC of contextual (Adsense) ads served throughout each subdomain -- assuming all else equal in terms of the ready supply advertising dollars for each of the two niches? (It seems to me that the answer to this question would be the same as the answer to the second one above.)

[browsee]

I went over to G's forum and asked if anybody had any ideas. John Mu (Mr. G Forum) cited the subdomains of some user that created spammy stuff.

That's strange. Yahoo answers site has useless, spammy content. Other Yahoo sites are doing fine. Blogger subdomains are spammy with stolen/scrapped content, but they are actually up. I don't think they can demote a site solely based on sub domains.

[Shatner]

You'd think Yahoo had some secret partnership with Google the way they've come out like a rose in Panda.

Almost all of their content is spam or just a bunch of dupes of other people's content. Their entire news section is nothing but syndicated stuff that's on a billion other sites, but they still get to top the top of every search term.

So awful.