Having a Subfolder/Subdirectory With a Different Design Than the Root Domain

[AndyRCWRCM]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering what Google thinks about having a subfolder/subdirectory with a different design than the root domain.

So let's say we have MacroCorp Inc. which has been around for decades. MacroCorp has tens of thousands of backlinks and a couple thousand referring domains from quality sites in its industry and news sites.

MacroCorp Inc. spins off one of its products into a new company called MicroCorp Inc., which makes CoolProduct. The new website for this company is CoolProduct.MacroCorp.com (a subdomain) which has very few backlinks and referring domains.

To help MicroCorp rank better, both companies agree to place the MicroCorp content at MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/. The root domain (MacroCorp.com) links to the subfolder from its navigation and MicroCorp does the same, but the MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ subfolder has an entirely different design than the root domain.

• Will MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ be crawled, indexed, and rank better as both companies think it would? Or would Google still treat the subfolder like a subdomain or even a separate root domain in this case?

• Are there any studies, documentation, or links to good or bad examples of this practice?

• When LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com, for instance, what if they kept the https://www.lynda.com/ design as is and placed it at https://www.linkedin.com/learning/. Would the pre-purchase (yellow/black design) https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ rank any worse than it does now with the root domain (LinkedIn) aligned design?

Thanks!

Andy

[AndyRCWRCM]

• Thanks, I also got a pretty thorough response on the Google Webmaster Forum

[ClaytonJ]

Am not 100% clear but design and differing templates are 100% not an issue for SEO.  In fact clarity on pages vias content and design is preferred.

The sub-folder should be stronger than the sub domain  in the instance described.

Not sure if answered question but reach out if not.

Go get em.