If I have a site like: mysite.com and this will be penalized for some reason, will my subdomains link random.mysite.com be penalized too? What if a subdomain gets penalized?
google considers subdomains as different sites if there is a lot of them and they are not interlinked. I hope this helps
Well I have 3 subdomains (different languages) And my main site links to each sub domain. The sub domains don't link to each other.
Yes Google sees subdomains as different websites. However through experience it takes subdomains a lot longer to be indexed and ranked. Have you tried verifying your website on webmaster tools and used the XML to tell Google your priority pages for which you want them to be ranked?
sandbox and being penalized are two different things. what i understand, sandbox is just the keyword. if www.mysite.com is penalized,it may or may not affect the subdomains. even though subdomains are different,if your doing something goolgle doesn't like,it can affect all subdomains.
a site will be sandbox due to over promotion of a certain keyword. but if when you say it affect the subdomain of the site, the answer is No.
I believe for a newly launched domain name and site the main address plus all the subdomains will remain in the sandbox for some months.