Has anyone recently moved a blog from a subdomain to a directory and seen observable improvements in search traffic? I find this incredibly difficult to believe these days. Google can sniff out content farms, but somehow blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog is a mystery? (Yes, I've read Matt Cutts' ancient and ambiguous post on the matter).
It's a matter of PR. A blog subdomain and the bare domain will have two different PR scores. The blog subdomain will receive links and that will add to its PR. If the blog is on the bare domain then PR transferred from links to the blog go to the bare domain. That gives you more PR for the bare domain than if you were to split the two out. It's a design decision in how they see separate domains.
I'm not aware of any specific case-study evidence, but in general, free wordpress/blogspot/tumblr etc do not outrank self-hosted blogs just because they are a subdomain of the highly valued domain like wordpress.com. (Of course, maybe it's just because the root domain doesn't link out to those random blogs in the way that a self-hosted site and subdomain would.)
I think the reason is obvious - why would Google want to treat blogs differently because of something so trivial as subdomain vs directory?
I'll buy that it may be a challenge to determine which subdomains should be treated as part of the main domain and which should be considered separate. BUT you can make exactly the same argument for directories (or pages for that matter). In the end, the selection is meaningless - either the site is meant to be an extension of the main domain or it's not. Figuring out which is which is an exercise in determining relevance. And given that Google has spent an obscene amount of effort on that very problem over the last couple years, I think it's reasonable to assume they've got this one licked.
But I really wish someone had some data. Or even an anecdote. Because I could be totally overestimating Google's sophistication.
Comments
Another important one to add is not to host your blog on a subdomain for SEO. http://blog.example.com is inferior to http://example.com/blog
Has anyone recently moved a blog from a subdomain to a directory and seen observable improvements in search traffic? I find this incredibly difficult to believe these days. Google can sniff out content farms, but somehow blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog is a mystery? (Yes, I've read Matt Cutts' ancient and ambiguous post on the matter).
It's a matter of PR. A blog subdomain and the bare domain will have two different PR scores. The blog subdomain will receive links and that will add to its PR. If the blog is on the bare domain then PR transferred from links to the blog go to the bare domain. That gives you more PR for the bare domain than if you were to split the two out. It's a design decision in how they see separate domains.
I've heard the logic. What I'm looking for is evidence that it actually happens for blogs.
I'm not aware of any specific case-study evidence, but in general, free wordpress/blogspot/tumblr etc do not outrank self-hosted blogs just because they are a subdomain of the highly valued domain like wordpress.com. (Of course, maybe it's just because the root domain doesn't link out to those random blogs in the way that a self-hosted site and subdomain would.)
I don't see why it would apply any less for a blog than it would for other subdomains.
I think the reason is obvious - why would Google want to treat blogs differently because of something so trivial as subdomain vs directory?
I'll buy that it may be a challenge to determine which subdomains should be treated as part of the main domain and which should be considered separate. BUT you can make exactly the same argument for directories (or pages for that matter). In the end, the selection is meaningless - either the site is meant to be an extension of the main domain or it's not. Figuring out which is which is an exercise in determining relevance. And given that Google has spent an obscene amount of effort on that very problem over the last couple years, I think it's reasonable to assume they've got this one licked.
But I really wish someone had some data. Or even an anecdote. Because I could be totally overestimating Google's sophistication.
Wait, do people still bother with PageRank these days?