subdomains vs folders

[mediahound]

Hello everyone it's Jarred.
I just got my hands on some more great domains, and I'm wondering.
I'm planning out sitemaps for a few already, and here's the question: Has anyone ran any tests to see what the search engines favor more - subdomains or folders.
That is, what's more favorable to the almighty?
mywebsite.thisdomain.com
- or -
thisdomain.com/mywebsite
I would assume that the subdomain gets more *points.
Everyone knows that power is in the domain name, right? Or is that a bad assumption?
Whats everyone's experience relating to this?
Has anyone ran any actual tests?
I'd be surprised if the students at Stanford
haven't ran experiments on this yet.
Any actual data out there I can absorb?
Has anyone learned anything they'd like to share with the rest of us regarding this matter?
Please reply, as well as participate in the attached poll.
Thanks, and hope everyone dosent work too hard this weekend. (Go do some snail shopping at the mall :-)

Look forward to your replies!

[Conficio]

Hi Media Hound,
I'd like to vote for "it does not matter" ;-)

I believe a site is constituted in the search engines (and in the users mind) by strong cohesion (many links among the pages, realtive few links to other "sites" for the search engines - a coherent design schema for the human user).

Take care (of your 850+ web sites - I'm ipmressed)
K<o>

[YogiDeGr8]

Sub domains have much better search engine value than sub directories.

try to search in google "Silver Jewelry Jaipur"

See my sub domains for site http://www.shauryainternational.com

:) dose any one needs more explainations... :)

[Markll]

With sub-domains most cpanels have the ability to get statistics for each sub domain separatly as opposed to having the stats lumped in with the main domaim.

From an organization point of view there are advantages to using sub-domains.

[T2DMan]

I promote an number of restaurants.

If I organised my site using subdomains, I would totally spam the serps - since subdomains are so good. Even when I optimise for different terms they get listed merely since I have the phrase mentioned on the page, and I have lots of PR and top optimisation. Already when I have separate domains for individual clients, I end up having all the top 10 listings for a particular search phrase.

I much rather have one listing at the top and give the searcher variety.

That being said, when I can't get to the top with PR/text links/ onpage optimisation etc, I am now considering starting to use subdomains with 302 temp redirects back to the normal page. Google has in the past listed these domains separately, as long as I have no/limited links back to the normal page.

www.time2dine.co.nz

[T2DMan]

deleting duplicate post-sorry

[mediahound]

Thanks for the replies.
What I'm looking for now is some hard data, I have a feeling there's been studies on this.

Cheers,
Jarred

[mm99]

If you are even contemplating which way to go, chances are that you're better off with sub-domains because your content is separate or unique enough for you to even asked the question to begin with.

Always go with sub-domains if that is the case. You can optimize the url for example, to reflect the content contained in the site. You don't have to worry about "cross-linking" either. I have one circle of 3 sub-domained sites that all link to each other, and each others subpages and they actually help each other out and all rank well.

I also use redirects a lot, and of course they are all subdomained. They wouldn't work so well if there were any problem getting listed, or ranked, but that's another story altogether...

peace...Paul

[2mb]

Jarred,
Nothing personal, but you are competition. Most people aren't going to give you the data from their experiments, since they worked really hard to get it and usually their methods and processes are their key to success.

You might get someone to give it up that is upset with their partners, but being someone who used to be in the SEO game, I would have never told anyone anything about my techniques while I was doing that for a living, especially because I was good at it. I sold my business when it was doing well so no longer have any idea what all the current tricks are.

I found that no technique worked well in all situations for all customers. It is a constant game of spy vs. spy and it never stops. Not only that, no technique works equally well for all of your clients. Nothing successful works for very long.

Your best option is to see what works for your keywords, since no technique is a magic bullet. I heartily recommend finding out for yourself, especially since half of what people spew is B.S. and may send you down the wrong path, or worse, get you blacklisted.

You go around giving people your techniques, especially in a forum, and next thing you know, you are losing your rankings or that trick just doesn't work anymore because the engines just built a new algorithm to detect it when everyone started doing it at the same time.

Eventually nothing will work, except giving users informational value in your pages. Try this, and some originality, and you will find your technique.

l8,
2mb