Is it problematic for Google when the site of a subdomain is on a different host than the site of the primary domain?

[Christian_Campusjaeger]

The Website on the subdomain runs on a different server (host) than the site on the main domain.

[DirkC]

Hi Martin,

This should not have an impact. Google is focussed on providing the best user experience, providing relevant content to its visitors, adapted to the device they are using & served in an efficient way (performance). How you organise your technical architecture behind it should have no importance. You would certainly not be the first to have a website running on different servers for different parts of the site. Typical example is a shop using Magento or some other e-commerce application on 1 host, and a blog on Wordpress on another host.

That said - there are still some points you need to take into consideration:

1. Server location - while probably not as important as it's used to - it's probably better to keep the location closer to your main audience (mainly because it can have an impact on performance. Quote from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html on location as ranking factor

Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone.

If both servers are in the same location it should not be a problem.

2. You might consider to shift the subdomain to a directory as Google seem to prefer all content on one subdomain. You might want to check this WBF on subdomains vs directories: https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Even when using a directory - it is still possible to use two different servers.

Hope this helps,

Dirk