For me, even if aiba.wufoo.com and wufoo.com/aiba point to the same IP address and have the same functionality, the former feels more like my site, whereas the latter feels more like my part of someone else's site. If you want to create a service that gives people their own presence on the web, this could make a difference.
Alternatively, maybe most users don't pay attention to URLs or look at the distinction above in the same way we developers do.
Also, the subdomain strategy seems to have worked well for Blogger. They serve users' pages from *.blogspot.com, and their own pages from *.blogger.com.
As he said, a sub domain is often considered a separate domain when it comes to SEO. His other arguments about naming seems rather hand-wavy, though.
Security-wise, a subdomain can also be a different origin. Which is often positive, so a flaw in your blogging software doesn't allow someone to extract cookies or so from the main site.
It took me some minutes to figure out the difference in those 2 urls.
I think it might be better in terms of usability and fairness if you chose a different domain. one that differs more from the existing project.
Nothing to do with the post, but I wonder why they've chosen to host the blog on a separate domain instead of a subdomain on the official site. I did confirm blog.yelp.com redirects to it, but still it's easy to be suspicious of a separate domain not having the same owners.
The obvious difference is that that's higher up in the hierarchy rather than lower in it. www.example.com and example.com are controlled by the same entity; example.com and example.foo may well not be.
WR currently considers subdomains as a part of the main domain.
Most users like to know the full tech stack of a website. If there is a blog at blog.company.com and if it is using Intercom, it can be a useful data. I hope this makes sense.
Anyway, we will definitely address this concern and think about adding an option for subdomain separation.
WR currently considers subdomains as a part of the main domain.
Most users like to know the full tech stack of a website. If there is a blog at blog.company.com and if it is using Intercom, it can be a useful data. I hope this makes sense.
Anyway, we will definitely address this concern and think about adding an option for subdomain separation.
It's not the same issue at all, in that domains with different suffixes are controlled by different people while foo.com and www.foo.com are controlled by the same people.
If you have an example of somebody who needs to serve different web content for foo.com and www.foo.com, I look forward to seeing it. But I've never seen one, and when I've seen it happen accidentally it's due to idiocy.
Indeed, it's not like there are an endless number of common subdomains which don't convey much information. "www" is one, "blog" is another. That's about it.
I think the reason is obvious - why would Google want to treat blogs differently because of something so trivial as subdomain vs directory?
I'll buy that it may be a challenge to determine which subdomains should be treated as part of the main domain and which should be considered separate. BUT you can make exactly the same argument for directories (or pages for that matter). In the end, the selection is meaningless - either the site is meant to be an extension of the main domain or it's not. Figuring out which is which is an exercise in determining relevance. And given that Google has spent an obscene amount of effort on that very problem over the last couple years, I think it's reasonable to assume they've got this one licked.
But I really wish someone had some data. Or even an anecdote. Because I could be totally overestimating Google's sophistication.
Alternatively, maybe most users don't pay attention to URLs or look at the distinction above in the same way we developers do.
Also, the subdomain strategy seems to have worked well for Blogger. They serve users' pages from *.blogspot.com, and their own pages from *.blogger.com.
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