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From reading that article it looks like they are doing this for their webmaster tools, but don't mention if they are combining subdomain links and primary domain links into their SERP calculations as if they were the same site.

Knowing if it affected SERP calculations is more important. Have you seen any articles on that (going to search shortly for that ;))

That would be more interesting to me as our site currently has at least 6 subdomains for publicly accessible sites, and while I would love to move them all under sub folders it requires a decent bit of effort on our side. If Google just counted them all under the same link profile for rankings then it would save time and money, and give Google a better view of our web presence as a whole. This would be better for the end user as the end user would be able to get to our blogs, forums, portal, and API knowledgebase easier from search results when just searching for our company name. So I can see it being useful for Google since it is useful for users.

For that article (webmaster tool purposes) I think it makes sense as it helps simplify reporting for the "www" subdomain. It makes it easier to aggregate your data, and see it how Google really sees it (especially if you have a rewrite from www.example.com to just example.com or vice versa). So it sounds good to me

If it were me, I would serve up the 200, but any time a "no-content" page was served up under a different URL I would use a canonical tag to point Google to a standard /no-content page.

This is an easy way to tell google "hey these are all really the same page, and serve the same purpose as /no-content. Please treat them as one page in your index, and do not count them as spammy variants."

So let's say I am working for bloggingplatform.com, and people can create free sites through my tools and those sites show up as myblog.bloggingplatform.com. However that site can also be accessed from myblog.com.

Is there a way, separate from editing the myblog.com site code or files, for me to tell google to stop indexing myblog.bloggingplatform.com while still letting them index myblog.com without inserting any code into the page load?

This is a simplification of a problem I am running across.

Basically, Google is associating subdomains to my domain that it shouldn't even index, and it is adversely affecting my main domain. Other than contacting the offending sub-domain holders (which we do), I am looking for a way to stop Google from indexing those domains at all (they are used for technical purposes, and not for users to find the sites).

Thoughts?

Looks like a case of lots of on page content with an exact matching domain for the country based google search. Just another example of how exact matching domains with matching content are BIG factors in ranking.

It would be interesting to follow it over time to see if it did drop off over time. But if you look at it from Google's perspective it makes sense:

1. Search is made on google.hu - The site is using a .hu domain
2. The Search is on "Viagra" - The domain is "viagra.info.hu" so this checks out
3. The content on the page is formatted to be read well by a search engine, from title tag to header tags to links, and it uses the search term
4. The page is simple so it tends to load fast

From that standpoint if I am Google I am putting some trust in those factors over just links. And the fact that it is a localized site for a localized search probably helps it out a TON as they would want to show a .hu site over a more general viagra site, especially if it is using the correct language.

Makes me wonder how many people should be buying local exact match domains, putting up some relevant content landing pages, and then have a call to action pointing back to their normal site to drive leads.

Here is what I posted last time this came up:

I would get those re-written to dashes for a few different reasons:

1. Dashes are known as the best way to separate terms in URLS
2. IMO dashes are easier to read by the user, and easier to remember thus more user friendly (just my opinion though no data behind this)
3. Plus signs are often used in URL encoding or in query strings, both of which are not great for users, and both of which have been thought of in the past to look somewhat "off putting" to search engines compared to dashes.

So while it might be a pain I would say go to dashes.

Also here is link someone posted last time about an article Rands wrote in 2006:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-bes...