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I am configuring a new brand which is a sub-entity of a well established organisation with excellent Google standing.

I was thinking to configure the new site as a subdomain, new.old-brand.example, but also purchase new.example and redirect that at the subdomain, as it is easier to recall in promotional material.

I am wondering about the SEO impact this may have (and therefore if it is even worthwhile). We really do want to market this as an integrated brand within the main brand, hence the logic behind the subdomain.

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  • What are you debating might be worthwhile? Buying the new.example domain? Or using a subdomain?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    May 30, 2022 at 8:31
  • I would yield to what is best for marketing. I can not confirm (hence comment and not answer), but strongly believe with past evidence that Google does not have a preference. Marketing preference seems to go back and forth, and I've been on the new.site marketing preference for a while. A noted exception is that some free sub domains are attractive nuisances for spam and google does not index those neighborhoods well, (too many free sub domain sites go bad even if they started good) ... So it is important all sub.domains follow proper guidelines ... user.example.com could go bad.
    – Wayne Smith
    May 30, 2022 at 19:28
  • Another consideration could be related to size of the websites. Google attempts to respect not flooding a site to millions of requests causing a denial of service problem; They don't hit a single domain / IP address that hard. So if the site has millions of pages googlebot would hold back a bit.
    – Wayne Smith
    May 30, 2022 at 19:39
  • Thanks for your feedback everyone! @StephenOstermiller: I am wondering if it is worthwhile redirecting a succinct URL at a subdomain. We could just use the new URL (no subdomain) and integrate the mothership brand visually — but then the site wouldn't inherit the SEO standing of the current site (it's a well-established brand with high traffic). I am also concerned about how that would translate to Google organic search result display. My intuition is telling me to just cross link to the old site and just go with a succinct brand new URL that is not a subdomain.
    – onthedl
    May 30, 2022 at 20:55
  • Both sub-domain and new sites begin as new sites ... although it has been debated for many years if sub-domains get trust. ... as it is debatable, I'm a skeptic ... Good content gets trust and people who write good content create new sites that quickly gain trust, (both sides believe what they say). It is agreed however that a directory does inherit trust.
    – Wayne Smith
    May 30, 2022 at 22:10

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