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Google Treats Some Subdomains as Single Site, Not Multiple Sites

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subdomains single siteThere has been a pretty fierce debate in the SEO industry on the issue of subdomains versus directories, and in what kind of situation websites should use each kind.  But John Mueller made another interesting comment in the most recent Google Webmaster Office Hours.

The question was a longer complicated question about the use of subdomains versus a single domain with directories situation, and which would be best from both a technical and SEO perspective.

Many SEOs feel that subdomains can be stronger in certain situations, but also that they act somewhat separate compared to directories.  They are considered different properties in Google Search Console – essentially as individual websites , rather than a single one in a subdirectory situation.

During Mueller’s answer, he commented that Google is really good at being able to recognize a single website across multiple subdomains versus when it is multiple different (and often unrelated) sites across those multiple subdomains.

From my point of view, you can definitely use subdomains if that works better for you, go for it. That’s not something where I’d say you’d be worse off on subdomains.

We do try and understand the structure of the sites so if you have one normal website spread out across a lot of subdomains, which we sometimes see people have wildcard subdomains set up, then we’ll probably recognize it as one site, where as if we recognize that there are multiple sites running subdomains, we will recognize them as multiple sites.

So it’s not necessarily something where it always goes one or the other.

And don’t forget that using subdomains isn’t a way to aggressively SEO one section of a website, as manual actions given to subdomains can affect an entire site.

But this throws some more food for thought into the subdomains versus subdirectories argument, for those who weren’t aware of it.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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Comments

  1. I seem to remember Matt Cutts saying that one or two subdomains may be seen as the same as root domain, but more than that, they are separate.

    Makes a difference for SEO and backlinks for sure.

  3. In my experience this is definitely not the case. Every instance of a subdomain I have run into is definitely treated as a different site and rarely benefits from the overall authority of the root domain. The second we move a blog, or a ecomm section from a subdomain to a directory the section almost instantly benefits. While John might be telling people to “go for it” I think this is going to create more work for their SEO than they anticipate.

  4. my experience shows that subdomains are the seo devil stay with subfolders much more effective