Matt Cutts Talks Subdomains Vs. Subdirectories

By Chris Crum · October 31, 2012 · 9 Comments

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Google’s Matt Cutts posted a new Webmaster Help video about subdomains vs. subdirectories. It’s a topic Google has talked about various times in the past, but as Cutts notes in the video, it’s been a while, so perhaps it’s worth revisiting.

The user-submitted question he’s responding to is:

I’m interested in finding out how Google currently views subdomains — whether there’s any difference between a site structured as a group of subdomains and one structured as a group of subdirectories.

“They’re roughly equivalent,” says Cutts. “I would basically go with whichever one is easier for you in terms of configuration, your CMSs, [and] all that sort of stuff.”

You can watch the video for a more complete answer.

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There are 9 Comments. Add Yours.

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Nick Stamoulis
November 1, 2012 at 9:28 am

I have always preferred subdirectories to subdomains. I think it makes it easier for visitors to remember because it fits right in with the rest of the site structure and how people expect URLs to work.

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Eric Scism
November 1, 2012 at 11:16 am

I totally agree with Nick! I always prefer subdirectories. To me it makes sense organizationally. It’s just like organizing files on your computer. You make sub folders and place them in there. Just makes more sense to me.

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Kate
November 2, 2012 at 2:14 am

I also prefer subdirectories to subdomains. There is a logic behind it but I do it for my personal liking because I think subdirectories look more appealing.

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David Carley
November 2, 2012 at 6:50 am

This was discussed in detail at SearchLove London 2012, mainly in respect to targeting customers in different countries. The outcome was to stay away from subdomains and stick with subdirectories; but naturally that isn’t the end of the discussion, there’s also some handy code to add to the head of the site’s code to really ensure the site operates to its optimum in these markets.

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Ajay Jhunjhunwala
November 2, 2012 at 7:52 am

I also prefer subdirectories Nick Stamoulis. It looks smart and decent to use sub directories. It is easy to maintain for me and i observed the search result pattern about listing urls from sub domains and main domain. Google is smarter than us so, I always remain a white Hat SEO.

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Brian Gomez
November 2, 2012 at 6:12 pm

I prefer subdomains for sites that need to target various geographic locations and directories for sites that are ecommerce or targeting only city.

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craig
November 4, 2012 at 8:35 am

Matt makin sense again.. I prefer sub directories, but as he says, it don’t matter.

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brian
December 6, 2012 at 11:48 pm

How would you apply this to an international company with a corporate site based in Europe, and individual country sites in many countries? Should the US site use a:
subdomain like, us.companyname.com
subfolder like, http://www.companyname.com/us
country TLD like, http://www.companyname.us

I think most country sites would go with the country-specific TLD, but that doesn’t have the same impact in the States as a .com.

Any suggestions?

Thanks so much,
Brian

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Austin Movers
December 31, 2012 at 8:11 pm

It saves on your ssl certificate to use subdirectories as you don’t need a wildcard.

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