I agree. But at the same time because its still on the main domain which has authority i have a hard time believing the engines don't trust the url more as a sub-domain vs a bran new url.

Hey Mate,

One of my clients has around 20 terms on his site that we created exact match sub-pages for which are basically:

domain.com/key-word/

These rank very well, I can't say they are as good as an actual exact domain match but they def help get us ranking faster because the keywords in the url at all create authority.

This is why I suggested the Google webmaster tools.

Bing has a similar tool aswell.