Hi, I hear that sub-domain is usually treated as a new domain. In that case, waht happens to domain-age problems? When you make a new site, I know it is better to have "old - age" domain. So, if I don't care about domain name itself, is it better to make a site with a subdomain of an old domain?
I also am interested in this. I created a sub domain for an online arcade and it is acting as if it were a new domain and almost appears to be sandboxed. The main domain is fine and new pages often have movement in 24 hours or so. But not the sub domain though many of the pages are already indexed.
This is what I've heard/read over the years... at Pubcon... Google help forums... Cutts blogs... etc. They do treat subdomains as separate sites in most cases. For example, Google will only show 2 results for a domain on a single SERP... However, we frequently will get 2 results for our main domain and maybe one or two more results on the same SERP page for our subdomains. This would would seem to support that they are seen as separate domains. It's my understanding that for certain domain level ranking factors like domain authority, domain trust, etc. a subdomain typically has to start all over building trust and authority. Supposedly, subdomains whose main domains have really high domain trust and/or really high domain authority can inherit these domain ranking attributes from the main domain, but typically the subdomain is starting from scratch again. I've only heard this in reference to domain trust and domain authority, but my guess is that if it is true for those two then it would also apply to ALL domain ranking factors (those related to the domain that effect all URLs on the domain). But I also heard it ONLY applies to VERY authoritative and VERY trusted sites.
I think you might be right if this is the case. Might as well register a new domain but there are none left even close to "free online games". Plus, since the arcade is deeply tied to HCG I think I'll keep it as a subdomain. Certainly a lesson learned.
It's better to use an older domain that is well established in the eyes of search engines to make a site. However make sure that the domain is not dropped else it's no different from a new domain.
I don't think that a subdomain is considered exactly as a new domain, it doesn't have the same rank influence, authority, relevance, etc but at the same time some of the domain trust has to be passed. Anyways I would recommend creating folders (site.com/folder/ and not folder.domain.com). If you still want to create a subdomain in your "aged domain" link it properly from the main site and it will pass some "authority juice", but it might take more time than if you create a new folder in the site. Buying old domains is a myth, google is a registrant, as soon as you change the who.is information and servers they'll know it is a new owner and will take you back to 0, the only advantage is if the domain already has many incoming links. (you can try and fool google buying an old domain but you'll have to change the who.is and servers slowly and carefully) Building subdomains to create a new site could make some sense if the content is related. If you create a "Used Cars" subdomain in a "skateboarding" site it wouldn't make any sense and you are much better off buying a new domain. A few years ago many black hatters where creating unrelated subdomains in high PR sites and used to rank very well easily, but it doesn't seem to work anymore and I'm sure that it won't look natural (white/gray hat) to the search engines anyways. I guess that this separation happened after all the blogging platforms came out. At first blogs hosted in blogspot.com used to rank easily for almost anything, so (I'm guessing) google had to work around this issue.