Site with both subfolders and subdomains

[medi_]

Hi everyone,
I'm working on a website that has a quite extensive subfolder structure for product and multilingual purposes.
domain.com/en
domain.com/it
domain.com/fr
domain.com/en/category
domain.com/it/category
domain.com/fr/category
domain.com/en/category/product
domain.com/it/category/product
domain.com/fr/category/product
domain.com/en/category/product/region
domain.com/it/category/product/region
domain.com/fr/category/product/region
and so on...

We will soon be launching a completely different service, which would make the subfolder structure become even more complex. As John Mueller recently stated that Subdomains and Subfolders are treated the same by Google, I am now considering building that new service under subdomains for product reason, and for the sake of clarity.

1- Would my subdomains inherit the authority of my main domain? 
2- Do I have to keep the language folders with the subdomain structure?
e.g.:
new-service.domain.com/en
nouveau-service.domain.com/fr
nuovo-servizio.domain.com/it

OR
new-service.domain.com
nouveau-service.domain.com
nuovo-servizio.domain.com

Looking forward to reading you!

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi There,

I completely understand your dilemma, it's painful to see a divided opinion of experts on sub-domain vs sub-directories debate; more pain is both sides are trying to logically justify their conclusion. We have faced such situations in the past and tested both sub-domain and sub-directories versions of the website, here are some of our own findings.

• Website's own structure to showcase to search engines that you are multi-lingual or a specific language domain is VERY important part of building an ML website.
• The main website's authority has a very little contribution when it comes to sub-domains, and some contribution when it comes to sub-directories. Ultimately, it is the content and its presentation to search engines at the right places what matters(to make them understand what language search should point to what content).

I hope this help, let me know if you have further queries.

Regards,

Vijay

[Corbec888]

Hi there,

Subdomains are known to be a separate entity and as such will not inherit the authority of your main domain.

With regards to your second question I'm a little confused, if you are debating whether or not to have multiple subdomains for multiple languages I would recommend just putting the different languages in subfolders as you've done before.

If you start using multiple subdomains for a product to denote a different language then you will need to generate authority to each of those subdomains as authority doesn't pass on.

I hope this helps to answer your question