Google’s foremost spamhunter Matt Cutts announced at the PubCon that is taking place in Las Vegas at the moment that they will finally tackle the subdomain problem. In the past this blog was not the only one to point out this problem. Which is that subdomains admittedly inherit the main-domain’s trust, but are seen as an independent host by Google which leads to situations in which one domain will dominate SERPs completely. A WebmasterWorld-Thread discribes that Google wants to treat subdomains like folders on a main-domain in the future which would lead to only two results from one domain being shown per resutlspage:
Matt Cutts mentioned that Google is working on code to eliminate that possibility for most domains. That is, Google plans to treat most subdomains essentially like any other url on the main domain, and they will limit that domain, INCLUDING all its subdomains, to two positions total on any given search.
A step that I welcome heartily but which is past due for years. I am curious if, after the introduction of this feature, we will see an effect on the traffic of domains who are profiting strongly from this at present.
Update 12.11: Cutts is paddling back in a posting on his blog and explains that a few changes were made a few weeks ago but that in the future we should not expect major improvements on this topic. Hmpf.
