Sphinn - How Changes to the Way Google Handles Subdomains Impact SEO

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How Changes to the Way Google Handles Subdomains Impact SEO

Went Hot: December 12, 2007 - 7:47 am
Posted By: Wiep 308 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Google SEO

Vanessa Fox revisits common site structure choices, how they’re handled by Google, and how that impacts SEO.

13 Comments

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from Carfeu 308 days ago #

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"bots crawl from the home page down." - what if the PR of an inside page is higher than the PR of the homepage?

from jmart 308 days ago #

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would it hurt your site if you created multiple blogs on the same domain?

for example:

www.domain.com/bmw
www.domain.com/honda
www.domain.com/chevy

etc...

from mileusna 308 days ago #

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What about languages? I'm about to expand one of my sites geographically with subdomains, similar to wikipedia, i.e. en.wikipedia.org, it.wikipedia.org, fr.wikipedia.org etc.

from Kalena 308 days ago #

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On his blog post about this, Matt Cutts said that sub-domains for different languages and regions is a good idea.

from mileusna 308 days ago #

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Thanks, I have missed that out!

from qwerty 308 days ago #

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Also, this clustering happens for each set of 10 results, so although you will see a diverse result set on the first page, you may see a lot of the same types of results once you click to the second page.

Actually, it happens for each SERP, no matter how many results the page is set to display.

from Kalena 307 days ago #

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Thanks Vanessa, this is a much clearer explanation than others.

from surftrip 306 days ago #

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aaaargh!

I am starting to think it's just me. All this butt kissing, "Thanks Vanessa, this is a much clearer...blah blah blah"

I completely disagree with all this article praise and find this indicative of the reputation management style of writing that goes on in this incestuous circle of SEOs.

What does this article really say? The headline infers an explanation of subdomain impact on SEO, but I don't see anything new here. Instead, we get a breakdown of the possibilities for segmenting content. What is this? 1999?

I suppose if you are brand new to site development, seo and usability this breakdown might really be hella enlightening, but I would think SPHINN groupies would be far beyond this dribble.

All this article says to me is that Vanessa Fox is a relatively smart person, who knows the business, and was able to slice, dice and regurgitate common information in a very professional manner. ...but, YAWN man, can't we ever cover new ground in this business?

In the past I've complained over and over again about this SEO group's love and passion for top 10 lists and obvious link dropping disguised as fluffy, gum-smackin' comments towards each other's articles ...but it seems we are now entering a new era for the SEO media elite called same ol, same ol'

Come up with something new and creative, ...please. This article could have been summed up as:

Matt Cutts has subdomainers worried that they won't rank well anymore, but don't worry, the changes mentioned are subtle and you should simply keep on doing what your doing if your utilizing responsible SEO tactics and being smart about visitor usability.

Done. The rest was just Vanessa showing us paragraphs and paragraphs of what she knows about about domains, subdomains, and directories --- which is site building 101

from scottclark 306 days ago #

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@surftrip - don't hold back - let it out, man!

from dannysullivan 306 days ago #

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@surftrip, the changes to how Google handles subdomains are new. And if you're a pro, good for you -- you understand that subdomains were previously a way to perhaps dominate the search results page that might not work now. Guess what? There are lots of new people, both who read Search Engine Land and on Sphinn. Sphinn has people with a mix of skill levels. In short, your "sum up" isn't going to work for a lot of other people who actually need the long, spelled out 101 version.

from Kalena 305 days ago #

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@surftrip - I think that's the first time I've even addressed Vanessa and I did so because I found her host crowding explanation much more enlightening that Matt C's version. The sub-domain stuff is something that really confuses webmasters and I get asked about it a lot. Any post that helps me explain it saves me time.

from g1smd 305 days ago #

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*** On his blog post about this, Matt Cutts said that sub-domains for different languages and regions is a good idea. ***

I believe he also said that separate country TLDs was the preferred method, but if you have to have it all on one domain (perhaps a .com or something), then subdomains would then be a good idea.