Are subdomains trouble for a good PR?

[Hyra]

I was wondering whether having a lot of subdomains would affect the PR of a site.

My site uses a lot of them for the different sections.

I.e. from www.artinvolved.com you can go to browse.artinvolved.com, forum.artinvolved.com, news.artinvolved.com etc.

And then of course every user has its own <user>.artinvolved.com

I'm guessing the www. one won't get much of a PR because there isn't a whole lot of content pages behind that domain.

Should i be rethinking the domain structure, or would having a "low PR" for each subdomain be okay as well.

Not sure if the above makes sense

 

[shockie]

the "p" in "pr" stands for page.

subdomain, domain, etc are for the most part out of the equation when comparing to a page's pr.

 

[earnbussi]

no it dosnt

 

[Hyra]

Well that evens things out ..

Ehh ... mm

So how much does the domain as a whole count for a good PageRank. I would guess it just takes into account the TLD, not the individual pages?

 

[Peter]

I wouldn't be so quick to say that subdomains dfo not have an impact on PR. Pages within a site pass pagerank to pages that it links too. Are you 100% sure that the same pagerank % is passed on within internal links as it is external links.

 

[webd]

If the subdomains are significantly different and you have good link popularity, I would leave them.

The "forums" subdomain is not a bad idea.

Does the "browse" subdomain contain similar content to the main domain? If so, I might 301 redirect those pages to a directory on the main domain.

 

[Hyra]

It's an art community. So browse shows the various thumbnails of the artworks of artists. Which in turn link to the specific artists subdomain.

I.e.

browse.artinvolved.com -> artistname.artinvolved.com/artwork/blah_23/

Would you suggest using as few subdomain-names as possible for a better rank?

I notice I got a 0 PR at the moment, so things can't get worse

I kind of like the subdomains as it allows for quick/easy access of the various parts. Some people might just want to browse some stufff and type in browse in stead of www for the main page. In addition it gives the different artists their "personal" domainname.

 

[webd]

I don't have time to look closely at the site this minute, but each user having their own subdomain might work. Many sites do this successfully -- like wordpress.com and stumbleupon.

Your PR will go up once you get more inbound links. Visible PR only updates every few months.

 

[Hyra]

This has very little to do with it but might not be worth opening another thread ..

Just saw (through google webmaster tools) that i have got 0 backlinks while i used to have quite a few, and i know they're still out there.

This happened after i created a sitemap.xml, but this should not cause this?

This pagerank/backlinking stuff sure is complicated headbreaking stuff

 

[Daniel]

This has very little to do with it but might not be worth opening another thread ..

Just saw (through google webmaster tools) that i have got 0 backlinks while i used to have quite a few, and i know they're still out there.

This happened after i created a sitemap.xml, but this should not cause this?

This pagerank/backlinking stuff sure is complicated headbreaking stuff

Google never reports backlinks accurately. :td:

 

[mwzd]

Sub Domains, unless with exceptional content and decent traffic, tend to bleed PR.

The way you have it setup is fine, except for <user>.... - that could really kill your PR.

As a rule I prefer everything to be be sub url - http://url.tld/<user> or http://url.tld/forum - works best for PR. Though content and relevant backlinks are king.

 

[weblord]

Larry Page will be angry with you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page

the "p" in "pr" stands for page.

subdomain, domain, etc are for the most part out of the equation when comparing to a page's pr.

 

[Hyra]

As a rule I prefer everything to be be sub url - http://url.tld/<user> or http://url.tld/forum - works best for PR. Though content and relevant backlinks are king.

Hmm, worth considering, though I, and the users, really like the personal domain name. Short and custom, rather than an extension of the site.

But i can see how it can kill the PR, and how it could be better to have it "integrated".

I will have a think . I think.

 

[mwzd]

There has been an update to google PR system.

Sub domains are now seen as regular sub directories as far as SERs are concerned.

So you have nothing to worry about. cheers!

 

[shockie]

actually it's more of the other way around; subdirectories are seen more as subdomains. there's a post about it here: treating subdomains as subdirectories (folders) from sep. it's recommended that you stick to using folders unless you really know what you're doing with your website.