To Sub Domain or Not To Sub Domain? What Are the Best Practices?

[fathom]

Understood - but it would appear depending on how many subdomains and in what example, your provided article to contradict that. That's what I was trying to pry out of Rod ;-)

Can you rephrase?

I don't quite understand the slant... or maybe that was the point.

[joshz]

Can you rephrase?

I don't quite understand the slant... or maybe that was the point.

No, no, no slant. I was saying that the sub domain theory provided by you seemed to contradict the article Marie provided. I was simply trying to 'pry' more information out of you since you speak in riddles sometimes ;-) and you seem to know Penguin very well.

Just wanted to get more of your opinion and debate that theory vs. article. That's all I'm in a good mood today, no sarcasm from me yet.

[fathom]

No, no, no slant. I was saying that the sub domain theory provided by you seemed to contradict the article Marie provided. I was simply trying to 'pry' more information out of you since you speak in riddles sometimes ;-) and you seem to know Penguin very well.

Just wanted to get more of your opinion and debate that theory vs. article. That's all I'm in a good mood today, no sarcasm from me yet.

Ya... I just didn't quite catch your meaning.

As I stated earlier if you ask a Googler a specific question worded differently than the one they just answered you'll often get a completely different answer.

Taken JohnMu's comments in context I would say if you added something in a subdomain that got BANNED the ban would propagate across the complete website... I would agree.

If you got a manual review for something in a subdomain (whether you added it or a 3rd party did it without your consent - you consented to their access and that is good enough) the root owner is indeed liable for that... but cleaning up that subdomain problem guarantees your root domains also recovers. That recovery can be as easy as "deleting it"... now "no more problem"!

But you can't just delete a domain name (if all your problem links are focused on the domain name).

Thus I'm not saying anything different than JohnMu.

[Dr.Marie]

If you got a manual review for something in a subdomain (whether you added it or a 3rd party did it without your consent - you consented to their access and that is good enough) the root owner is indeed liable for that...

I was thinking about this earlier today. What about sites like Wordpress.com? There are 61 million Wordpress blogs. I know for a fact that a large number of them are sites that were created solely to build spam SEO links. So what happens when these blogs start getting penalized? Is Wordpress.com doomed?

[fathom]

I was thinking about this earlier today. What about sites like Wordpress.com? There are 61 million Wordpress blogs. I know for a fact that a large number of them are sites that were created solely to build spam SEO links. So what happens when these blogs start getting penalized? Is Wordpress.com doomed?

YES but at the same time a Manual Review also requires a spam report being sent. I doubt anyone sends a spam report to Google about Wordpress, they send one in about the domain owner that the webspam on Wordpress was meant to enhance.

[Dr.Marie]

But isn't John saying that if your subdomain gets penalized then it affects your whole site? So, out of 61 million word press subdomains what if a percentage of those get penalized? Is it likely to affect everything on wordpress.com?

Personally I think that was one of those statements that Google just sort of leaks out but there are no teeth in it. I think the goal was to try to get sites that offer free subdomains to people to monitor those subdomains better. But I can't see how they can penalize a whole site for something that happens on one subdomain.

[fathom]

But isn't John saying that if your subdomain gets penalized then it affects your whole site? So, out of 61 million word press subdomains what if a percentage of those get penalized? Is it likely to affect everything on wordpress.com?

It's completely up to Google for starters but the punishment usually fits the crime... so if this is just a case of link webspam I would think that is limited to the subdomain that got caught.

If this was malware that hacks users accounts I'm sure Google would banned the complete domain so Wordpress would quickly take action on the problem.

[Test-ok]

With all that's been said...wouldn't it be better to use say word press as a sub page rather than a sub domain on ones site?

[Dr.Marie]

I'm not talking about self hosted Wordpress. I mean the free blogs that exist like example.wordpress.com.

[joshz]

I'm not talking about self hosted Wordpress. I mean the free blogs that exist like example.wordpress.com.

You just blew my mind. Good point. Very, very good point.

Is it possible Google 'knows' such 'hosts'? Any network engineers in the thread? Is it possible to disassociate a sub domain from the root in a case like this?

[fathom]

You just blew my mind. Good point. Very, very good point.

Is it possible Google 'knows' such 'hosts'? Any network engineers in the thread? Is it possible to disassociate a sub domain from the root in a case like this?

"BAD HOSTING" does not imply simple link creation schemes.

A PENGUIN thing DOES NOT propagate across subdomains and neither does a PANDA thing and JohnMu never implied these conditions exist.

BAD HOSTING implies Malware & Phishing as two examples where the owner of the domain MUST take action.

You're assuming 2 + 2 = 4 where you aren't going back to the original source to read the context of John's comments.

Remember there were no WMD in Iraq... same thing here... READ THE SOURCE THREAD COMPLETELY FOR CONTEXT!

[IbrahimSaeed]

Thank you Fathom, Joshz and Doctor,

From what I am gathering you all seem to agree (to varying degrees) that a sub domain can be a risky proposition. BTW thank you for the link Dr. an interesting read.

So considering the risk involved…

1. Would you create the 2nd site (landing pages or mini site) using a completely different root domain?
2. And would you personally use the very same look and feel or design for recognition purposes?
3. And how would you keep the “landing pages”/”mini site” away from the engines and more importantly away from the visitors (consumers) on the 1st site?

[fathom]

From what I am gathering you all seem to agree (to varying degrees) that a sub domain can be a risky proposition. BTW thank you for the link Dr. an interesting read.

That isn't true... the thread got off into a side-topic. I wouldn't setup a sub-domain for someone else on your domain. Pay the $2.99 for a dot.info domain and the $12/year hosting fee (That's 15 bucks... who can't afford $15 dollars?)... if you want to do someone a favor so you don't risk getting involved in something you don't want to be involved in and paying dearly for it.

This: 1.domain.com and this domain.com/1/ are completely identical if you fear having problems with 1.domain.com then you have the same fears with domain.com/1/ as anything that harms 1.domain.com will 100% harm domain.com/1/

It's also worth mentioning anything done in this 1.domain.com will not just harm in that and in this also domain.com/1/ but will not be seen as WOW THAT'S REALLY GREAT! ...in a completely different domain either.

JohnMu's first point in the chosen thread of reference, if you're building WOW you'll do a better job in your current domain as oppose to diluting your efforts by working only half-time on 2 projects.

Just to follow up on what others here have said, I'd also recommend taking the time to focus on a single, fantastic website. In the long run, having something of extremely high quality, that highlights your knowledge and experience (and perhaps that of your site's contributors), is going to be a big asset. Splitting your time across a number of sites, some of which are bound to end up being somewhat mediocre (if you don't have enough time to make them all awesome), can end up diluting your efforts, instead of creating something that you can build on.

Especially when it comes to medical sites, I'd strongly recommend taking a look at Amit's 23 questions regarding high-quality sites at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...h-quality.html -- in particular, I'd recommend finding a few people who aren't associated with your site at all, and going through those questions after they've completed some sample tasks on your and on other websites. Listen to their feedback, and think about how it can be used to improve your website. Even looking at the feedback here, I can see that there are things around your website that worry discerning users. I realize taking the feedback here can be hard, but sometimes it's better to get the raw feedback than to get a sugar-coated version.

[Dr.Marie]

Sorry to derail this discussion again, but I was just reading the information that Google gives about the disavow tool and came across this:

Can I disavow something.example.com to ignore only links from that subdomain?
A: For the most part, yes. For most well-known freehosts (e.g. wordpress.com, blogspot.com, tumblr.com, and many others), disavowing "domain:something.example.com" will disavow links only from that subdomain. If a freehost is very new or rare, we may interpret this as a request to disavow all links from the entire domain. But if you list a subdomain, most of the time we will be able to ignore links only from that subdomain.

I know we're not talking at all about disavowing in this thread, but before I mentioned how sites like wordpress.com could be affected if Google was to allow spammy links to a subdomain to affect the whole site. From the above quote, it looks like Google treats wordpress, blogspot, tumblr and others differently than small sites with just a few subdomains.

[fathom]

I know we're not talking at all about disavowing in this thread, but before I mentioned how sites like wordpress.com could be affected if Google was to allow spammy links to a subdomain to affect the whole site. From the above quote, it looks like Google treats wordpress, blogspot, tumblr and others differently than small sites with just a few subdomains.

Hmmm...

If a freehost is very new or rare

Define a rare freehost?