Subdirectory to Subdomain

[jrs79]

I have a question about moving subdirectorties to subdomains.

When moving subdirectories to subdomains how much value would you estimate that they would lose in the eyes of Google since they are longer associated with the domain in the same way.

If anyone has experience with this it would be great to hear. Thanks in advance for the help.


Also, I don't see many subdirectories in the results. Anyone else?

[vandelayweb]

You're right. I don't see much of this in practice either. Why would you want to go this route? The only time I've ever heard of this in practice is someone trying to escape a penalty.

If you 301 redirected it over, you should maintain any link value you've gained prior to the move. If there is no value, it should take a hit since Google sees this as a new domain. The collective value of the old domain should be pulling the value up of individual pages. If the domain is new or doesn't have much authority, you may see no change at all in rankings.

[lucy24]

I don't see many subdirectories in the results.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Results ordinarily show pages, not directories or sites.

they are [no] longer associated with the domain in the same way

That raises a question of fact, which I don't remember seeing answered-- at least not recently enough that you can rely on it.

If a search engine sees
aa.example.com
bb.example.com
cc.example.com
would they assume by default that those are the same underlying domain, or unrelated ones? I stress: by default, if they don't happen to know the name.

[jrs79]

You're right. I don't see much of this in practice either. Why would you want to go this route?

I don't want to, but have had it suggested to me. Think something like Franchisees.

If you 301 redirected it over, you should maintain any link value you've gained prior to the move. If there is no value, it should take a hit since Google sees this as a new domain. The collective value of the old domain should be pulling the value up of individual pages. If the domain is new or doesn't have much authority, you may see no change at all in rankings.

This is a big part of my question. I know that they would receive the value of the 301'd pages, but would they essentially be cut off from the link value of the main domain?

I don't understand what you mean by this. Results ordinarily show pages, not directories or sites.

I probably did not make this very clear. I am trying to understand how strong Google's preference for pages on a domain vs pages on a subdomain.

[iammeiamfree]

I did move to subdomains and basically did not see much difference in rankings. Imo the value is passed by linking structure of the site so it makes little difference if the links point to subdirectories or subdomains. I did see a slight advantage but I believe it is to do with the subdomains being location names as opposed to product categories or something like that. It is quite a bit of hassle to make a lot of subdomains but they do work quite well for kind of microsites about specific locations. If you want to accesss webmaster tools you would have to set up each subdomain individualy and they mess with other traffic stats tools as well since the subs are treated like incoming links so it is more difficult to find referrals. I have also had problems getting some comment scripts to work and so on.

[incrediBILL]

maybe it will come back again soon. Have you considered using it as an opportunity to get some media attention.

Not sure what you mean because the SERPs are full to the brim of subdirectories.

Furthermore, how can you tell if it's a path or a URL?

For instance this very thread:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4682921.htm

Could be an exact path to a file in the /google subdir but in this case it's an apache rewrite rule sending it elsewhere, but how would you know the difference?

You wouldn't.

However, most WordPress is installed in a subdir "/blog" all over the place and they show up everywhere.

Regarding subdomains:

One advantage of subdomains are they bring more content to the top level of each subdomain, which you can't really do in subdirectories. Another advantage is you get to use a different robots.txt on each subdomain which makes it easier to control crawling for that content vs. an entire site all in subdirectories. Additionally, sitemaps gets smaller and easier and sites are a bit flatter and easier to crawl.

I've done both and they both rank the same for me, but it could be a skill level issue for others trying to rank huge sites all under a single domain.

YMMV

[jrs79]

Thanks for all of the feedback. It is appreciated.

IncrediBill - Thanks. I was thinking that I rarely see a subdomain such as seo.webmastersworld/google/4682921.htm (I made this up). I thought it could just be the SERPs I watch, but you make some good points.