Nope. We still don't believe them and still have overwhelming evidence that Google doesn't consistently treat all pages on multiple subdomains the same way they do URLs on the same subdomain. They've said for years that it doesn't matter, but the evidence and data are clear. Putting content on multiple subdomains will almost certainly cause it to perform worse in Google than keeping it all on the same subdomain.

The comments here show some nice examples of folks who have moved their content to a single sub/root domain and seen big traffic bumps from search as a result: https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Agree with Patrick - those resources should help and in general, I'd bias to merging the sites. You may even lose out short term, but long term, you'll almost certainly be better off focusing your efforts and energy, and earning the branding benefits of a single site and name.

I wouldn't worry about it at all. The engines are definitely advanced enough at this point to perceive "Electronics Expo" and separate that from "Electronic Sex Po." If you love the name and think it's brandable, go for it.

Hi Brian - that's not quite accurate. It isn't that DA scores are all going to go up - in fact, many of the ones that were higher in our last couple indices probably should have been lower, and this is more a correction/normalization. As I noted in another response here, following a single DA score can be very unrepresentative of reality vs. following many scores in a niche across competitors. DA fluctuates as Google updates their ranking algorithm because DA uses machine learning against Google's SERPs (and ~once a year) we retrain our model.

Domain Authority scores aren't great ways to know how you're performing in SEO in absence of context, but they can be very good to see how you're performing against other sites in your industry or with whom you're competing in search results.

Every new index we produce has lots of scores going up and down because the link profiles that correlate best with ranking higher in Google change, the links we discover change, the sites that get penalized or that grow rankings substantially change, etc. Domain Authority is less like a fixed metric that grows as you grow your link profile and more a relative metric that changes as the web and Google change.

Hope that helps!

Yeah - that's likely a combination of the new index being smaller and of us cutting out stuff that we think Google may not have been counting. In future indices, you should see it go up again. My advice is always to watch your competition's numbers, too, as relative indices like Mozscape will reflect those changes best in relative numbers.

Hey gang - thought I'd jump in with some official word from the Mozscape/Big Data team:

This latest index is smaller than prior ones, meaning we indexed fewer webpages total. However, the quality and importance of those pages in general is higher. In particular we've cut out a exceedingly large number of pages and subdomains on many Chinese sites that appeared to be biasing our crawl priorities and giving us some serious processing trouble.

DA, PA, and link metrics have maintained very similar correlations with Google rankings in this index, so if you've seen a large drop in either, it may be related to the removal of links that Google may not have been counting very highly. However, it's also possible that you've lost DA/PA from links that Google did count and Moz should be, too. As we regrow our index size in the next 2-3 updates, you may see a return of those scores. We do expect the next few indices to process much more quickly than the lag we experienced in the last few, and are watching indices very closely to make sure we're on the right track.

Also, with DA/PA drops, note that every index these occur, primarily because the sites and pages at the very top of the metrics scale (with PA/DA scores in the 99-100 range) are growing their link profiles massively, thus stretching what it means to have those incredibly high scores. If you had a DA of 90, and gained great links at the same rate you did last year, but many other DA 90+ sites were growing their link profiles even more rapidly (which tends to be how the web goes - the rich get richer, faster, every month), your DA would likely fall a few points even though you technically are still growing your link profile. DA/PA of 100 gets harder and harder to achieve every index because of the rate of growth of pages like Twitter.com, Google.com, and Facebook.com.

Hi Bijana - that's really frustrating and you have my apologies. When I reviewed Squarespace (which, granted, was 18+ months ago now), I didn't encounter that issue, but I also don't remember how deep I dove trying to update Meta Descriptions. I'd say it's definitely worthy of bringing up to their support folks, and for what it's worth, you can tell them I'd strongly endorse/recommend making that change, too.

Hi Nima - that seems like a big swing for a move. I might double-check that all the redirects are correct and that engines are indexing the new pages properly. Google Webmaster Tools may be helpful there, too.

As far as timeframes for seeing traffic dip and recover, yes, we have observed that - it ranges from 1-4 months. You can see more about that here: https://moz.com/blog/rebrand-or-redirect-my-site-consolidate-multiple-sites-whiteboard-friday and in the comments.

Wish you all the best!

Well said - engagement > page views. Google's smart enough to understand that on more complex sites and with more complex technology/JS/etc, those aren't always perfect corollaries for one another.

I think there are elements of both iSTORM's and David's responses that are accurate. Page views in and of themselves are almost certainly not a raw ranking factor, but it could well be that engagement metrics that correlate well with page views (in many cases, at least) do have a direct or indirect positive impact on rankings.

I try not to guess at precisely the elements Google is or isn't using to influence the algorithmic rankings (based on what I read about their move to deep learning, it probably doesn't matter much anyway since the algo is becoming derivatives of thousands of metrics' interplays), but instead worry about the things that will cause the results and user experiences Google wants to reward. That was a lot of what this post was about: http://moz.com/blog/seo-correlation-causation.