Would using subdomains for various review sites a bad idea?

[Gino316]

Dear Fellow Warriors,

I've set up a few review sites onto 1 domain, with sub-domains.

They're actually really killer review sites, quite well optimized for Google. The sub-domains are self explanatory as to what the reviews are about. How does Google treat a sub-domain? Still as 1 site?

I'm actually thinking of making a certain domain into a Blog, perhaps another review site related to the "make money" niche. Basically, the entire domain would be sub-niched as per sub-domain.

Would doing this hinder my Google rankings and Adwords campaign? I'm still a real newbie, so any help would be much appreciated!"

[B.W]

Sub-domains are primarily used for load balancing, they do not hurt your rankings. But neither will they allow to dominate the results, like they apparently used to.

Think about it, why would you want to have blog.mysite.com rather then the more obvious mysite.com/blog/ ?

I would personally only make use of sub-domains, if i where load balancing between multiple servers.

[Stephen Root]

Are subdomains still consider as unique domains? I haven't checked that for a long time.

I have personally tested that if you do cloaking and get caught - your subdomain gets banned but not your primary domain (if you didn't link to primary domain from subdomain of course). But if your failing cloak is in the directory under primary domain, your primary domain gets banned always no matter if there's a link or not.

I think I might tell somebody here to do a test that do subdomains enjoy all the benefits of unique domain in 2009.

[hipnol]

subdomains are treated as unique websites and not related with domain in normal cases. But I have heard a penalization on main domain will affect subdomain, but a penalization on subdomain won't affect the main domain.

If you want better traffic results, its wise to go with sub directory than a sub domain.

Best example of success with subdomains is about.com

[NightWolf]

I'm interested in this too. I'm not using any cloaking, but have 2 subdomains off of one domain. Although I'm doing Adwords PPC, I understand that having a site that google "likes" will help get lower your PPC spend. Would having theses subdomains affect that? i.e. will google "like" this kind of setup, or will I be getting charged increasing CPC?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by hipnol

subdomains are treated as unique websites and not related with domain in normal cases. But I have heard a penalization on main domain will affect subdomain, but a penalization on subdomain won't affect the main domain.

This isn't correct. It once was, from what I understand, but it changed several years ago when this method became a popular way to game Google. Today, Google considers them the same website and will apply a penalty across the board if they don't like what they see in a domain and its subdomains. Likewise, authority gets passed down to the subdomains just as if they were subdirectories.

There are some exceptions to this for a few very large authority sites, such as Google's own Blogger, where each subdomain is still considered unique. However, this doesn't apply to us ordinary folk.

That said, the subdomain model is an effective way to have multiple niche sites when you're on a tight budget, especially for static HTML sites. It isn't as good as having an exact search match top level domain but, with the right SEO, they'll do just fine. I don't know about how it affects PPC.

[webmatic]

I don't know if using it for reviews is a bad idea or not but i am myself using subdomains on my main domain and its abc.mysite.com instead of mysite.com/abc ..
Loads of people told me that you should go for a .com or .net instead of subdomains because you are working hard at it but still i am satisfied with the results and i think so i can do the same using subdomains
Thanks
Webmatic

[ASM Marketing]

Originally Posted by Gino316

I'm actually thinking of making a certain domain into a Blog, perhaps another review site related to the "make money" niche.

I'm still a real newbie, so any help would be much appreciated!"

Hi Gino,

If I can offer my advice, you should consider a completely different niche. How can you expect to advise people on making money online if you have minimal experience yourself? Without sounding too cynical, this is where beginners fail.

Find another niche that you're interested in, research it, profit from it and THEN you can consider helping others. If you go head on into this niche with no foundations of success yourself, you will very soon become disenfranchised with Internet Marketing.

Alex