I’m getting ready to start working on a very large scale project for an organization that will be hosting conferences in more than 20 states. Each state will need its own “sub site”, so the topic of subdomains vs. subdirectories has come up a few times over the past week.

Fortunately, Matt Cutts  of Google has clarified a lot of the confusion surrounding the two.

My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I
usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my
content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is
completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such
news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer
webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to
feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that
point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your
own site.

I understand what Mat is saying here, and I’m happy to see someone from Google go public with an opinion. But my question is… what if subdomains would actually be helpful to the user? I mean, wouldn’t it be better to tell someone they need to go to nevada.mydomain.com instead of mydomain.com/nevada?

Interesting none the less.

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