Why should a subdomain under a directory that sells everything from "quick loans" and "dept consolidation" to "cheap health insurance" not be penalized? Probably Google considers this domain's root index page an Internet slum caused by all those 'spammy' keywords. Of course a pedlar who hawks such shabby Web addresses doesn't tell the purchaser that a subdomain can inherit bad reputation.

Not sure this article is accurate - .gb.com were given away at silly prices a while ago as part of a promotion. It's like comparing .info with .com - simply a matter of cheap domains with spam sites bringing themselves down, rather than affecting all other sites IMHO.

Hi Evilgreenmonkey,You would think so, but if you actually read the report carefully we compared .uk.com with .gb.com domains for precisely that reason - they have the same structure.  We did a third comparison in the study with .co.uk domains for good measure.This allows us to say (quite confidently, in fact) that it is not the apparent subdomain structure that causes the problem but actually something to do with the gb.com domains alone.

Yep, Google treats anything.co.uk as an independent site and anything.gb.com as subdomain, and rightly so.