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I've had a small stint into SEO in 2012 and Im pretty sure that Google treated Subdomains as their own entity back then. I would be suprised if this changed in

I've had a small stint into SEO in 2012 and Im pretty sure that Google treated Subdomains as their own entity back then. I would be suprised if this changed in the meantime.

turc1656 7y ago
If it was completely decoupled back in 2012 then there wouldn't be any advantage to leasing the subdomains or Google being peeved by it enough to take action. I suspect what is more likely is that the subdomains were separate but not completely unrelated/correlated to the primary domain. Google likely assigned a certain amount of value to the mere fact that it came from the core domain. I think that is what changed here.
- luckylion 7y ago
  Since this also affects leased directories, not just subdomains, there's probably more to it. Afaik, "normal" subdomains haven't been affected the same, only those that were leased out.
Implicated 7y ago
I spent a lot of time in the blackhat SEO world prior to 2014 or so... I can assure you that subdomains reaped a bountiful reward from their association to the main domain. They certainly weren't equal but they got more than a little (trust/authority/ranking - call it whatever you want) help from their parent domain. To the point that this was the case: If I bought a brand new, never used .com and built 500 pages of spammy content and linked those pages/content from thousands of other super spammy pages... that domain is de-indexed within 2 weeks and the pages never really ranked/got organic traffic worth the cost of the domain name. If I built those same pages on a subdomain and linked them in the exact same manner but the parent domain was very strong - the pages would rank and traffic would flow steadily, indefinitely. (As long as the parent domains footprint/linking was large enough to absorb whatever penalty that my spammy pages brought). It's still happening today where people buy up domains that are established with good link profiles - go to archive.org and download the sites old content, re-host it and keep it alive. Then they build spammy subdomains on the parent domain - profit.
- pizzapill 7y ago
  I've read that in multiple docs back then but since you observed this it could've been false. The rationale I had for it was that there are many sites with completely independent subdomains or technical resources like asset being served by subdomains. Buying established Domains and scraping old content does not rely on Subdomains. Affiliate, ads or your own product can be placed on the TLD. I dont doubt you tough and I think I will try it sometimes. Old school fun

I've had a small stint into SEO in 2012 and Im pretty sure that Google treated Subdomains as their own entity back then. I would be suprised if this changed in the meantime.

turc1656 7y ago

If it was completely decoupled back in 2012 then there wouldn't be any advantage to leasing the subdomains or Google being peeved by it enough to take action. I suspect what is more likely is that the subdomains were separate but not completely unrelated/correlated to the primary domain. Google likely assigned a certain amount of value to the mere fact that it came from the core domain. I think that is what changed here.

luckylion 7y ago
Since this also affects leased directories, not just subdomains, there's probably more to it. Afaik, "normal" subdomains haven't been affected the same, only those that were leased out.

Implicated 7y ago

I spent a lot of time in the blackhat SEO world prior to 2014 or so... I can assure you that subdomains reaped a bountiful reward from their association to the main domain. They certainly weren't equal but they got more than a little (trust/authority/ranking - call it whatever you want) help from their parent domain. To the point that this was the case: If I bought a brand new, never used .com and built 500 pages of spammy content and linked those pages/content from thousands of other super spammy pages... that domain is de-indexed within 2 weeks and the pages never really ranked/got organic traffic worth the cost of the domain name. If I built those same pages on a subdomain and linked them in the exact same manner but the parent domain was very strong - the pages would rank and traffic would flow steadily, indefinitely. (As long as the parent domains footprint/linking was large enough to absorb whatever penalty that my spammy pages brought). It's still happening today where people buy up domains that are established with good link profiles - go to archive.org and download the sites old content, re-host it and keep it alive. Then they build spammy subdomains on the parent domain - profit.

pizzapill 7y ago
I've read that in multiple docs back then but since you observed this it could've been false. The rationale I had for it was that there are many sites with completely independent subdomains or technical resources like asset being served by subdomains. Buying established Domains and scraping old content does not rely on Subdomains. Affiliate, ads or your own product can be placed on the TLD. I dont doubt you tough and I think I will try it sometimes. Old school fun