In the John Mueller 09/17/2021 Q&A, one webmaster was concerned about subdomains vs. subfolders.
John thought someone was trying to troll them again with this question.
John explained that subdomains and subdirectories are equivalent. It doesn’t matter which structure you use to create your website.
It’s possible to put your content together however you want.
In Google’s mind, it doesn’t matter either way.
John does, however, mention that there are several aspects that play a role that have less to do with SEO and are more about how you set up your site. Is it easy to set it up? Is it possible to track the performance of the structure you use on separate hostnames? Together on one hostname?
For some sites, it’s possible that Google might treat something on a subdomain differently. They may think it’s a separate website vs. all of the same website.
All of these aspects could play a role here.
This discussion occurs at approximately 45:26 in the video.
John Mueller 09/17/2021 Transcript
How does Google treat subdomains versus folders? Is authority passed through the subdomains?
John 45:31 (Answer)
Oh, my gosh. I don’t know. If someone is trying to troll us again. We, from our point of view, when we talk with the search quality team, they say subdomains and subdirectories are essentially equivalent. You can put your content however you want. Some people in the SEO world have very strong opinions. And if we say it doesn’t matter, and someone else says you should do it like this and you want to follow their advice, then it’s like, go ahead and do that. Because from our point of view, like, we say it doesn’t matter.
I think there are a few aspects that play a role there, which are less around SEO. But more around things like reporting is how easy is it to set these sites up? Do you want to track their performance on separate hostnames or together and one hostname? Those kinds of things. With some kinds of websites, it’s also something where we might treat things on a subdomain slightly differently because we think maybe this is more like a separate website versus all of the same website. So those things can all play a role there.
In practice, what I would say is try to focus on your infrastructure first, and see what makes sense for you. And then work on that. And if you’re working together with an SEO who has a very strong opinion, and everyone else is like, whatever you want, then, like, I don’t mind, like if you follow their opinion, either, because that should work too.
