Google Changes Algorithm for Subdomains
March 1, 2008
Louis Liem reports on a change with the Google Algorithm. Google seems to have changed the way they are treating subdomains in the rankings.
The article appears at Bukiki.com and includes quotes from Matt Cutts on the changes and what webmasters should expect with regard to subdomain rankings.
It’s likely you’ve seen all the change you are going to see since they’ve already gone forward with it. And since subdomains are supposed to be vastly different information than the information on the main domain and other subdomains anyway, this won’t affect most people.
The change was a result of people complaining about getting several results for a single domain on some long tail searches.
Overall the change should not affect a normal site’s rankings in any meaningful way. On the other hand, there are surely some spam site operators out there that are worried if they are using subdomains to game the system precisely to show up with multiple listings for essentially the same content.
This should take care of those knuckle heads!
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Thanks for linking to the article, Jack!
Thanks, Jack for the info.
I use subdomains but not to game the system. I have several niche sites as stand alone subdomains but cross linked to my other websites and my blogs.
I hope I’m not a “knucklehead” :>o
Jim
How will this affect sites like wordpress.com with millions of subdomains?
Will this change ‘burn’ the hosters of Niche Blog communities based on mu.wordpress.org?
Douglas Lampi’s last blog post..Sherman Hu on Media and Ideas
“Will this change ‘burn’ the hosters of Niche Blog communities based on mu.wordpress.org?”
It seems intended to burn sploggers and spammers. The way it reads is that people using subdomains with no meaningful difference in content in order to game the engines are going to be the ones affected.
This is a good step google has taken, but it would have been better if they could haveallowed to focus individuality of each sub domain with their respective keyword. selection. As in textilesinfomediary each sub domain have separate listing and sound search result.
Increasing Search Engine Ranking can be done by simply writing content that people want to see. As far as subdomains are concerned, I think Google is pretty good about seperating the spam from non-spam. For example, our blog with blogspot.com is CrackGoogleDotCom.BlogSpot.com and I am pretty sure Google is going to see that as a seperate site, no?
Here is the bottom line, and I have said this repeatedly. Design a CLEAN site using proper coding. Use proper tags and titles and then provide content that is relevant and you will be fine. Don’t worry about algorithms, worry about being clean, tidy, and providing relative content. Water always seeks its own level where the laws of gravity apply.