Google changing its Handling of Sub Domains

Google changing its Handling of Sub Domains




In the near future, Google will be changing the way it handles Sub Domains according to an article on SeroundTable. The article doesn’t go into all the details on how Google will handle the future changes but stay tuned for a post from Matt Cutts in the next week that will be discussing more about what Google’s plans are on the issue.


In the past any large company could use subdomains as an effective reputation management strategy.


As eBay and others have aggressively used subdomains to dominate branded AND unbranded search results, and Google has improved their sitelinks technology, any relevancy gain by treating subdomains as a separate site will be going away. Google is going to start treating subdomains like subfolders, and limit the number of results from any site to just two.


There is still an upside to using subdomains because they allow you to feature standout content, but that upside relates to how marketable the content on that subdomain is, whereas in the past using lots of subdomains allowed eBay to get 20 of the top 30 listings for some queries, even if the subdomain was recycled garbage.


This move adds value to regionalizing sites and creating niche brands, since currently I believe ebay.ca and eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices will be seen as two separate sites.


Source: SeroundTable Article - December 7th, 2007

Not sure if I like this or not.