Google's view of Crosslink from Subdomains

[sparky]

If you all can remember a couple years back when the SEO world was rocked when a person found a loop hole in Google's algorithm. This very intelligent person created a script that when the Google bot was recognized, the script would go out and make an infinite number of subdomains with relevant content and links pointing back to the main domain. As the Googlebot always has done, it followed the links and counted links from a subdomain as a IBL to the main domain. Hence this one persons domain had millions of IBLs. Google's official reply to this was "a bad data push" and they had adjusted their algorithm to fix this issue and the spammy sites were being removed automatically where as several members of the SEO world observed that the spammy sites were not being removed automatically, but were being removed by hand. Is anybody up to speed on what is Google's stand on subdomains crosslinking to the main domain? Does it still count as an IBL? Is this an okay thing to do or stray away from it?
No I am not asking if the flaw is still in the algorithm. I am just asking if crosslinking between subdomains and domains is okay in Google's eyes.

[wige]

From my observations it is allowable, to a certain extent. Google still treats subdomains as seperate sites, and there is no reason to expect links from one subdomain to another would not occur naturally. For example, two sites may be hosted on the same server and they may only have subdomains. They are not related, but have links to one another. They wouldn't be penalized for this.

As with any algorithm, Google's system is all about the numbers, trying to predict possible exploits and devalue them. In this case, if you have more links between subdomains than to other external sources, for example, it might be seen as spam, and those links may be discounted.

[sparky]

Originally Posted by wige

Saying all hackers are computer criminals is like saying all automotive engineers are car thieves

I love that statement

Thanks for your quick reply. I have been trying to follow up on this and everyone has a different perception of it. Yours makes the most sense. I agree with "if you have more links from the sub-domains then other sites".

Thanks

[jtracking]

i dont think there would be a problem unless you made a problem, namely did something that was obviously and blatantly deceptive but if you have a reason, and I mean a reason that is good for your visitors/members then by all means link them up but I wouldn't link a hosting site to a maid service site on or off the same domain if I was paid too.

Not that you're content is about hosting or maids but you get what I mean!

[DoneInStyle]

I don't think these sorts of links hurt, but I don't know how much they help either. Links from domains on the same IP block are valued less since Google expects that people will do this type of thing.

[pauliii]

I tried this technique with subdomains. Rather than put a info about many products on the same page, I wanted to put each product on its own subdomain. Thus each product would have its own "Home page". The links to the other subdomains on each home page would be nice plus.

That was about two years ago. My original Home page is ranked well, but the subdomains haven ever achieved any real presence in rankings. Further, the links between subdomains so not show up in Google link: search.

I've also tried it with multiple registed domains, all running off the same ip address. But these have not fared any better ithe Google picking up cross links. See
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[Skywoolf]

This could explain a problem I have.

I have a reseller account and I build websites within my account for customers so I have about 20 sites on the same server using the same IP address.

Those that are compatible link to each other just the same as I swap links or banners with sites elsewhere.

None of these links show up as incoming links.

Does this mean I have to pay for multiple servers or IP address for any links between sites I build for customers to be valid?

[modrewrite]

My site has domains:

Apache Web Server Blog - htaccess tutorials, mod_rewrite examples, and Web development, Research, Experiments
Index of / (css, images, code, pdfs)
Index of / (mp3's, mp4's, flash, movies)
FeedBurner (actually a CNAME for the feedburner mybrand feature)
Wireshark: What's on your network? (a mirror of wireshark.org)
cURL and libcurl (a mirror of curl.haxx.se)

I did a search in google and yahoo for site:askapache.com to see what their indexes had to say about this excellent topic. Both of them indexed all 5. I'm satisfied with that!

[Skywoolf]

My sites are all indexed but my page rank is low which I am assuming is something to do with the fact that all the incoming and outgoing links at the same IP address are ignored.

[jeffposaka]

In my experience, sites on the same server do not pass along link juice with the same strength as sites on different servers or data centers. I think they are discounted in some way.

[Skywoolf]

It looks like mine are discounted for sure.

[seharness]

Originally Posted by Skywoolf

It looks like mine are discounted for sure.

Sometimes it is not a discount... just not a plus. You need to look at your metrics for bounce, time on site, depth of visit and length at the very least.

On a scale of 1 - vital, 2- useful, 3-relevant.

Links are 2 or 3 and the human behavorial interaction scores are the #1. I have domains that I can show you that are 2 weeks - 3 months old with PR3 and I do not build links... my obsession is with the metrics and true value a visitor gets from the site.

1. You can add, media or tools to drive the metrics UP in your favor.
2. SEO Fast Start: Free Book & Free Help from Dan Thies recommends segmenting your visitors so that the person looking for blue cars is not subjected to red cars. Don't make your visitor think, make it easy for them and your metrics will improve.

Remeber this is for more conversion for revenue... not for the green slider or high rankings. It is about converting the traffic you have and forgetting about all this linking issues. There is not a easy road. To get great traffic that converts you need to be:

1 Unique
2 Natural
3 Resource

Look me up I will be glad to share some of my case studies for conversion analysis.

Best to you,

SEharness

[sanver]

I would like to get your opinion about a related topic.

What happens when different subdomains are aliased with unique domain names? e.g. sd1.domain.com may be aliased with sd1.com and sd2.domain.com may be aliased with sd2.com.

1. How Google treats cross-links from sd1.com and sd2.com?
2. Will the content at sd1.domain.com and sd1.com be treated as duplicate content?

======
Sanjay Verma
CRM Implementation in India | Windows VPS Hosting in India

[Clint1]

Anyone, should I have been using subdomains all along for my product pages instead of domain.com/product-name.html?? Should I create subdomains for these products and 301 the old URL's to the new subdomain URL's?
Thanks.

[linkrapid]

is not the first loop hole in Google's algorithm

[incrediblehelp]

Subdomains are perfectly fine to link to each other. Big websites like Yahoo do it all of the time.

[Clint1]

Anyone, should I have been using subdomains all along for my product pages instead of domain.com/product-name.html?? Should I create subdomains for these products and 301 the old URL's to the new subdomain URL's?
Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Clint no right or wrong answer here. It is up to you and how comfortable you are with the server and design setup. Both subdirectories and subdomains are fine with the SE's

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Clint no right or wrong answer here. It is up to you and how comfortable you are with the server and design setup. Both subdirectories and subdomains are fine with the SE's

I'm comfortable with it and know how to do these things, but the question is are the subdomains better for G due to the PR they pass. At least that's what I understood from this thread--that subdomains pass the PR more than non-subdomain conventional pages because the subdomains are treated as separate domains. If that is truly the case, then it would seem subdomain pages are the way to go, right? If I'm interpreting that wrong, please let me know.

[incrediblehelp]

I dont feel that is the case. Just look at the SERPs you will see product pages and subdomains both ranking fine. We over think these small aspects to much when SEOing.

[innominds]

I think the cross linking from the domains is acceptable when it looks natural. Simply overdoing it may result in punishment.

[leesw]

Let me make sure I get this right. If two domains are sharing a server on a host as most websites do, and one links to the other, Google doesn't weight the link as much?

I would tend to think that Google would look to see how many of a site's incoming links are that way before making a judgement call. I mean, as many sites as Godaddy hosts you'd think there'd be a lot of sites sharing that host that link to each other. So I think the algo people at Google would have thought that one through a little better. Don't you?

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by leesw

Let me make sure I get this right. If two domains are sharing a server on a host as most websites do, and one links to the other, Google doesn't weight the link as much?

I would tend to think that Google would look to see how many of a site's incoming links are that way before making a judgement call. I mean, as many sites as Godaddy hosts you'd think there'd be a lot of sites sharing that host that link to each other. So I think the algo people at Google would have thought that one through a little better. Don't you?

So I think the algo people at Google would have thought that one through a little better. Don't you?
Not really.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I dont feel that is the case. Just look at the SERPs you will see product pages and subdomains both ranking fine. We over think these small aspects to much when SEOing.

Sure, I see that, but I'm still wondering which is better. For example, would a Product A page at Site A at position x in the SERP's be a position x minus y in the SERP's if it were a sub-domain instead? See what I'm asking?

[rumblepup]

Ok, let me throw my s and see if it stinks.

The subdomain issue has been around for awhile. The basics of it are this. The subdomains HAVE to have a purpose, a reason to be there. In the case of e-commerce, super niching your products don't really have a benefit unless your have truly varying categories.

For instance, if your website has a broad category, like sports equipment, but you have a some sub-categories that fit, but not exactly, but are still very related, they can go into a subcategory.
i.e., baseball-cards.sportsequipmentcompany(dot)com.

However, superniching, isn't going to help. Superniching is when your in a very niched business, lets say balls for sports (watch it incrediblhelp ;P.) So you have balls-for-sports(dot)com, and you carry golfballs, basesballs, footballs, etc. There is no need whatsoever to subdomain you baseball category, because what you doing is weakening the authoritiy of your main site. All of your sub-categories shore up your main category authority. So, if you create baseballs.balls-for-sports(dot)com, your starting all over again with a new site, and weakend the one that you where buidling authority with. Where you can subdomain, would be something along the lines of different sales typs, like commercialsales.balls-for-sports(dot)com. That makes more sense. Your site would pass better PR to the commercial site, and the commercial site, being related, but not the same, could send soooooome PR juice back. Not all recipracol linking is bad.

Now, for other kinds of sites, let's say blogs, or portals, or information sites, adding subdomains would be a good idea, as long as each category of subdomain has a purpose. Here's an example.

Welcome to About.com

About.com is an information portal (who then sell advertising other stuff) that covers a very BROAD range of topics. So for more distinct topics, they create subdomains. Each subdomain points to the main domain, the main domain points to the subdomain.

Now, Google is pretty smart. They know that all these subdomains are really a part of the main domain, so if you do a site:about(dot)com you get 866,000 listings, and the subdomains are listed. BUT, if you do a site: command on one of the subdomains, like R&B (site:site:randb.about(dot)com) you get a listing of only that subdomains pages, about 2000.

Hey, look at wordpress(dot)com. Perfect reason to have a whole bunch of subdomains, an s-load of blogs. Look at the PR by the way.

So if you have a perfectly good reason to subdomain, different information, slightly different category, a true spinoff site, go for it, it helps.

Just spinning off one category of your products, or services. Don't. Keep building up the authority of your site.

At least, that's what I think.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Clint1

Sure, I see that, but I'm still wondering which is better. For example, would a Product A page at Site A at position x in the SERP's be a position x minus y in the SERP's if it were a sub-domain instead? See what I'm asking?

Right Clint and like I said I dont see that being a difference at all.

[sanver]

If you create domain aliasing for sub domains and allow search engines to spider sub domain and aliased domain, will it not be teated as a case of URLs with duplicate content?

I will really appreciate if somebody can help me in this matter. I am facing a problem along this line. I have aliased www-hosting-sanver-com with www-sanverhosting-co-in. I would like to create different IBLs for these domains / URLs.

Sanjay Verma
Oracle Hosting | SugarCRM Hosting

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by sanver

If you create domain aliasing for sub domains and allow search engines to spider sub domain and aliased domain, will it not be teated as a case of URLs with duplicate content?

I will really appreciate if somebody can help me in this matter. I am facing a problem along this line. I have aliased www-hosting-sanver-com with www-sanverhosting-co-in. I would like to create different IBLs for these domains / URLs.

I may be missing something but that looks like duplicate content to me. Two differnt URL's/domains, same content.

[sanver]

thanks clint1 for your reply.

As the domain and the subdomain are aliased, Google can find that both these URLs are on the same IP address. Would it not help in getting these URLs not categorised as having duplicate content?

Domain Aliasing is very commonnly used in hosting.

[mtuba4u]

Can any body point out the difference between Http://www.domain.com/itemA and http://itemA.domain.com

My web host uses Cpanel, and they are treated as the same space by Cpanel.....

does google or any other search engine treat these as different ?

any body Know the differance, beacuse as far as I can tell these 2 URL's are one and the same hosting space, and physicaly ocupy one area and are not seperate in any way besides the name.

IE www.domain.com/itemA and itemA.domain.com are one and the same thing. Is this true ? and how does Google treat this?

[mtuba4u]

Originally Posted by innominds

I think the cross linking from the domains is acceptable when it looks natural. Simply overdoing it may result in punishment.

Over doing any thing causes the search engine algorythm to take notice and you WILL be punished....

Quite often less is more, as repetitive statements tend to be ignored. this is true even in general conversation between people, and some body once told me that the algotrythms at search engines are based on how people rate the thread in normal conversations.

Rating the relevance of a certain word is difficult, but when more than one word is strung tofether it becomes more difficult as each word is rated individualy, then a combination of the 2 is rated, if one specific word is used excessively then the individual page will take the punishment, and score in SERRP will be a lot lower than expected.

once this is doubled, as the subdomain, and the subweb are one and the same, with included folders and pages being identical, then problems start to apear which the search engines punish you for.

it thus follows that when using subdomains and sub webs one needs to be extra carefull-----

[incrediblehelp]

I dont see a difference, but you will get varying opinions here.

[wige]

Between the two URLs, Google typically looks at different subdomains as the same thing as different domains. Links between subdomains are treated differently than links between different folders, for example. As far as a search engine is concerned, http://www.domain.com/items/itemA and http://www.domain.com/items/itemA?src=ad are two different pages, and they will be seen as duplicate content. http://items.domain.com/itemA is seen as an entirely different web site, and is still seen as duplicate content. There is no way to tell a search engine that a page is the same page but being accessed through a different URL. Your only option is to block one of the access methods, either the folder or the subdirectory.

[mtuba4u]

This sounds quite confusing...

the documents are in the same location, but are viewed from diferent URL's ??

surely google must have identified this by now.

But then again these are 2 different URL's with exact duplicate material as they are effectively one and the same....

your solution of blocking one or the other sounds great but how will this be acomplished?

any ideas...

[wige]

In htaccess (assuming you are allowed to use htaccess and are using Apache)

<folder subdomainfolder>
Deny from All
</folder>

Put this in the root folder of your main site, the one that contains your home page. When someone goes to your home page, the subfolder containing your subdomain will be blocked. When someone accesses your subdomain, since subdomainfolder is the root, the htaccess file in the parent directory won't be executed.

This *should* work, if everything is properly configured by your host, which considering how this subdomain scheme is improper to start with, is far from guaranteed.

[mtuba4u]

Thanx for that I will get some of the more teschnical guys to give me a hand with this