Subdomains vs Subdirectories? [SEO]
 

Hello,

What is the current concensus on choosing subdomains (canonical names) vs subdirectories as far as SEO goes?

For example, if I have MyDomain.com and it has good ranking, which of the following would gain SE prominence faster:

MyDomain.com/new-area/

newarea.MyDomain.com

??

This is assuming that both of the two options above would receive equal treatement as fas as backlinking and relationship to/from MyDomain.com

My understanding is that there was a general thinking that subdomains are treated as completely new sites and take a slower path to being discovered and recognized by G.

I would appreciate your feedback.

Thank-you,
-Dino

I used to use sub domains a LOT, now I don't.

Never noticed any real decline in the power of a campaign that used a directory opposed to a sub domain. :2 cents:

I'm sure you could find people that would argue with that though.

Directories for long term results

Extensive use of subdomains may be considered spammy sometime in the future

There's a strong school of thinking that 'new sites' are on a really slow list for getting processed by SEs and 'existing sites' are 'in the loop' (visa vi G deep crawls, etc.)

There are very legitimate uses for subdomains when it comes to structuring a web realm - especially when load balancing and content distribution is involved.

I have seen a lot 'spammy subdomains' as well.

Any more experience-based feedback??

Thanks,
-Dino