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Subdomain Leasing

chris

Top Contributor
A good article diving into the use of subdomain leasing by large media sites.

Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller fielded a question regarding this issue during the Google Webmaster Central office hours session held on June 28.

<snip>

Google also addressed the practice via a three-part tweet from its Google Webmasters account on August 14. It stated: “We’ve been asked if third-parties can host content in subdomains or subfolders of another’s domain. It’s not against our guidelines. But as the practice has grown, our systems are being improved to better know when such content is independent of the main site & treat accordingly. Overall, we’d recommend against letting others use subdomains or subfolders with content presented as if it is part of the main site, without close supervision or the involvement of the primary site. Our guidance is if you want the best success with Search, provide value-added content from your own efforts that reflect your own brand.”

...

For third-party content creators, where search engines draw the line may necessitate a new business model, or open the floodgates for a proliferation of subdomains with tenuous relationships to the main domain.

For site owners, renting out a subdomain to an unrelated, unsupervised third-party may have consequences on your own organic visibility, which may impact revenue. If it doesn’t, then we’re witnessing a new way for publishers to generate revenue — and, perhaps, a method for those publishers to use their influence in one sector to gain a questionable search advantage in other sectors.

The full article with screenshots/tweets here: https://searchengineland.com/the-li...asing-and-alternative-revenue-strategy-321253
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
It is a bit of BS in my view. The only reason why anyone would want to do it is if there is some kind of link juice/SEO benefit and Google would quickly stamp that out because it is gaming the system. Google will likely rollout a new update and penalise the entire site.

Nobody actually wants to "lease" a subdomain unless it is the "www" subdomain!
 

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