Google's John Mueller says 'it doesn't matter.' My analytics dashboard — bleeding 67% traffic after one migration — told a different story. Here's what 800+ indexed pages taught me about domain architecture.
After watching three client sites tank and rebuilding my own authority from near-zero, I'm putting this plainly: 95% of businesses should use subdirectories. Period. You're not special enough to need a subdomain. Your blog isn't different enough. Your 'clean architecture' excuse isn't worth fragmenting the authority you've bled to build. Subdomains exist for SaaS dashboards and little else.
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I watched 67% of my organic traffic evaporate in 8 days after a 8 days after a [subdomain migration](/guide/audit-seo-checklist).. Here's the forensic breakdown of Here's the forensic breakdown of [link equity](/comparison/on-page-seo-vs-technical-seo), crawl budget, and architectural truth., crawl budget, and the crawl budget, and the [architectural truth](/comparison/http-vs-https-seo) Google won't admit. Google won't admit.
3 wins for Subdomain (blog.yoursite.com) • 2 wins for Subdirectory (yoursite.com/blog) • 0 ties