Matt Cutts announced at Pubcon that Google will begin treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders.  The most dramatic effect is that many website that used sub domains as a way to dominate top search listings will have to revise their strategy as now only 2 listings will show up in Google for a particular domain even if sub domains previously pulled additional top rankings.  A good example used of this used by many SEO bloggers is Apple.com:

In this example, store.apple.com is the #4 search using a sub-domain with the main apple.com site holding the #1 and #2 spot.  In the new subdomain, the www.apple.com wil l stll hold the #1 ranking and the store.apple.com will have the indentation for store.apple.com resulting in a Top 10 ranking loss for apple.com with the introduction of a new competitor into the Top 10.

While this one re-stack of the Top 10 of Google is not significant, I have been asked many times from clients about sub domains and I have tended to recommend against the use of sub domains as a SEO strategy for a number of reasons, but the only that held up was my Google ’spidey’ sense that told me that Google may change their opinion on sub domains at some time in the future.  I think this is one of the first moves to treat sub domains as simply extensions of the core www instead of a separate web site.  Either way, there is an immediate affect on current Google rankings that are using sub domains.

A long story, but it can be told quickly. My good old buddy, Troy Lerner, has two small problems as he starts out his week.

1. He has started his blog and since he is not posting frequently, he isn’t getting indexed by Google. Since he runs a very respectable interactive agency in Denver, he is not at all proud of this fact and is going to fix this very, very soon! In fact, his wife started blogging just a week or so ago and is already indexed and receiving traffic. This leads me to his second problem.

2. Troy found a great deal on a pair of running shoes and being the avid runner that he is….he decided to buy 4 pairs. His wife was not really that happy about the decision and tonight Troy asked me to take a look at his Google Base page for 3 pairs of trail running shoes. Luckily, he gets to keep one pair.

I recommended that he throw out a quick PPC campaign jokingly and he said he was setting it up. Inspired by his motivation to solve the problem, actually to survive the wrath of his wife for too many day…I decide to see if I could help him out with a little SEO. So, Troy..here’s your link to support both of your problems ->GoLite Sun Dragon Shoes

When You buy A Google Mini, your company receives a free link on Google.com page that has a PR7 rating.  Here is the  page -> http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/success_stories.html

1.Paying this much money for a link may or not be a good idea.  Google has been penalizing sites that actively buy and sell links for the purpose of manipulating Page Rank.  But it seems like the going rate for PR7 site might be between $200 - $300 per month.

2. This is not a fee for a link, this is a software/server purchase for a Google Search Appliance called Google Mini. 

3. While this seems appealing, there is no guarantee from Google (unless it is actually in the contract) for them to list UDR.com on the product listing pages.  The other problem is that the more sales they make, the more links on the page….therefore, less link popularity.

So, if you want to buy Google Search technology…I think the $1,995 is a fair, if not good, price.  The fact it might get you a high PR link on Google is a huge bonus.  Unless, Google could have an internal setting not to count the PR in the favor of clients, which would not really be that hard to do internally for Google.