Does Google view each CMS installation as a separate site?

[Jayce]

Tried posting this thread twice to the main discussion forum before realizing that it was being deleted for not being in the right place, I'm really hoping that THIS is the right place.

If not PLEASE let me know.

Here's my query.

As I understand it Google sees subdomains as completely separate and unique sites from their actual domains assigning then equally separate and unique PageRanks (still not entirely convinced of this, but...).

If accurate I would attribute this to the fact that subdomains require a separate installation of your CMS (i.e. WordPress) on a separate SQL database.

If that's true does the same go for separate installations in subdirectories?

In other words, if your domain name is ABC123.com and you install an additional copy of WordPress to ABC123.com/sub-one and another to ABC123.com/sub-two and another to ABC123.com/sub-three and so on...

Does Goolge see each installation as a separate and unique site from the original domain as it does with subdomains?

Or does the entire collective domain (and it's subsequent PageRank) benefit from all of those separately installed subdirectories?

[dburk]

Hi Jayce,

No, Google doesn't see the pages on the same domain as being from separate domains. Whatever technology you have going on in the background has nothing to do with how search engine bots view or index your website, as long as they can access the pages with sufficient speed, it makes no difference.

Furthermore, Google doesn't assign PageRank to websites or subdomains. Search engines do not index websites, they index individual URLs. PagreRank is assigned to individual web pages, not websites or domains.

PageRank, trust and anchortext values are passed from web page to web page when you link them together, there are no website boundaries, nor domain name boundaries.

Google only uses domain level values when consolidating post query results or de-listing websites for violation of webmaster guidelines.

[Jayce]

Thank you so very much Don, I appreciate your clear and concise answer.

Only now I'm feeling as though I may have asked the wrong question.

Or at least worded less than accurately.

I do understand that Google sees the entire URL as opposed to the individual domain, subdomains and subdirectories for the purposes of indexing.

And I also understand (as the name suggests) that PageRank is a per page attribute based on the quality of that pages content and links.

I suppose what I really meant to ask was more of a "guilt by association" type of question.

In other words, do the other pages of a site benefit from the high PageRank of a particular page on that site just for being associated with it even if that association is through nothing more than the URL itself as opposed to anchor text links or site wide navigation?

[Jayce]

Like in the cases of web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or HubPages where a new page has a naturally elevated value (not necessarily PageRank (perhaps I'm using that reference a little needlessly)) simply for being the product of a high valued site.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Jayce

In other words, do the other pages of a site benefit from the high PageRank of a particular page on that site just for being associated with it even if that association is through nothing more than the URL itself as opposed to anchor text links or site wide navigation?

Hi Jayce,

No benefit as far as I have ever observed. I know there are folks that "feel" that there is, however I have never seen anything credible to suggest their feelings are based on anything real.

Originally Posted by Jayce

Like in the cases of web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or HubPages where a new page has a naturally elevated value (not necessarily PageRank (perhaps I'm using that reference a little needlessly)) simply for being the product of a high valued site.

The benefit from pages on sites, like those you mention, come from being part of a community where the community members visit and link to your page and internal links from high value pages that have earn PageRank and trust linking in to your page. Without those internal links, you might as well be on a brand new domain. Likewise, if you could get links from those same high value pages to your brand new website, you'd have the exact same SEO benefit as a page on those sites.