Google and sub.domians

why are these in favour now?

[Crush]

There is a new site in one of my SERPS's that came straight in a #1 from nowwhere. He is one of Google's new friends sub domains.

In this page of serps now 50% are sub domains from huge sites. Anyone else seeing this? Seems as though you are getting rewarded for having one domain.

I am thinking about doing the same now, putting all my sites onto one domain and interlinking them.

[ciml]

URLs are just URLs*. Putting a site on a subdomain shouldn't be a problem and I don't think that Google give any weight to subdomains as such, so I don't really see a problem.

(*): Well Google do give a boost to off-domain links, but does this apply to links between pages on subdomains of a domain?

[Yidaki]

>Google and sub.domians
>why are these in favour now?

They aren't.

>Well Google do give a boost to off-domain links, but does
>this apply to links between pages on subdomains of a domain?

Yes. Fortunately subdomains are treated as different sites like any other domain.

No special weight to subdomains at all though. My subdomain sites didn't move one single bit nor did my top domain sites.

>I am thinking about doing the same now, putting all my sites
>onto one domain and interlinking them.

You won't need subdomains for that. Actually, you'd be better without subdomains in case google would change their mind in future and start to penalize subdomains.

[soapystar]

i have posted this before..yes..Google likes subdomains..and i mean over above them being seen as just another domain/url.....interlinking subdomains works much better than interlinking seperate domains and is less likely to be penalised...interlink subdomains and you benefit as though they were seperate domains...you can get each subdomain listed in the serps at the same time and duplicate filters seem to be very lightly used across them.....i said it before and i will say it again..its an open invitation to have every page in your site linked as a subdomain rather than a url within the site so you can then get every page listed in the same serps..its happening more and more with serps producing a page of the same domain and its subs at 1-10 with the same information/products just slightly jumbled up...

[TheComte]

For what it's worth, I have a subdomain on one site that has jumped in PR to that of the main domain. There are no backlinks from third party sites that would account for this. This subdomain is now doing better in the serps. Google has at least changed its ranking algo for this site.

[Yidaki]

I'm working with pretty huge sites since a few years that are spread across several canonicals. I can't confirm ANY special treatment over "standard domains".

I know, this is an infinite debate ... ;)

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A bet: take 100 unique pages. Put those 100 pages at ten subdomains 1.example.com - 10.example.com (10 pages per canonical). Then do the same with example1.com - example10.com. Interlink the canonicals and interlink the regular domains. No other inbound links. If you then can show me a proof of a higher ranking of your canonicals over the "regular" domains, i'll send you a bottle of Dome Perignon. ÷}