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In googlemaster tools subdomain1.widget.com, subdomain2.widget.com and widget.com are added seperately, and although there is an option regarding widget.com and www.widget.com I cant see anything else to help link them together. But I assume when Google does its page ranking it would treat links from subdomain1.widget.com to subdomain2.widget.com as internal, i.e not given the same weight as if from another site such as different.com.

In a similar vein assuming my statement above is correct if I also happened to own different.com and that was listed in webmaster tools would that then also treat links between widget1.com and different.com as internal because under control of same person even though may be completely different sites.

And if I owned both but didnt add different.com to wemaster tools what would do Google then

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  • Links from a parent site to sub-domains and other domains will be treated as external links although there are other mechanisms within the search engine itself to relate all these sites that happens behind the scenes. For you to track any activity for a sub-domain or domain, it would have to be added to Google Webmaster Tools.
    – closetnoc
    Jun 26, 2015 at 15:47
  • @closetroc By my last comment I meant would them be some advantage in not adding different.com to google webmaster tools (at least not the same account) so it the other site my benefit from having links from another site deemed by Google to be an unrelated site.
    – Paul Taylor
    Jun 28, 2015 at 18:14
  • Google, the search engine, is wholly divorced from Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and so forth. There is no effect in search for anything you do in Google Webmaster Tools. Google search relates sites using a whole long list of things such as registration information, contact information, IP address, host, registrar, authors, etc. It does not use GWT for this at all. This is because most sites are not using Google tools and so the search engine cannot rely on these tools for actionable information.
    – closetnoc
    Jun 28, 2015 at 18:21
  • While not an exact duplicate, see Do subdomains help/hurt SEO? which has answers are informative for this question.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Oct 7, 2016 at 17:27

1 Answer 1

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Google treats all links to other domain names as external links, eg: example.com, sub-domain.example.com, example2.com, example.net are all treated as separate domains for the purposes of Google Search. There is a notable exception to this, Google treats links between example.com and www.example.com and internal links but that is simply due to the fact that most sites are configured so that example.com and www.example.com point to the exact same site.

There are ways through Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to visualise these links as internal but this is a special configuration you apply just for your data purposes only, they are still treated as separate sites in the inverted index.

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