Subdomain
A subdomain is a separate section of a domain with its own name in front, like shop.yourbrand.com or blog.yourbrand.com.
A subdomain is a part of your domain with its own name added in front. In shop.fernhillcoffee.com, the subdomain is shop. The www in www.fernhillcoffee.com is a subdomain too. Each one can run on a different system, which is why shops, help centres and blogs often end up on their own.
The choice between a subdomain and a folder, like fernhillcoffee.com/shop, is one of the oldest arguments in SEO. For a marketer, what matters is knowing that search engines may treat a subdomain as a bit more separate from your main site.
Subdomain or folder?
Both can rank well. In practice, a folder keeps everything in one place: internal links, reporting and the reputation your main site has built. A subdomain makes sense when the section really is separate, such as a help centre run by another tool or a site for another country.
For example, Kestrel Roasters moves its blog from blog.kestrelroasters.com to kestrelroasters.com/blog. The posts are the same, but now every link to the blog points at the same site as the shop, and one analytics view covers both. The move needs a redirect from every old address to its new one, or the posts lose the links they had.
Subdomains and AI answers
When an AI platform cites your help centre at help.yourbrand.com, you want that to count as your own site. Many tools sort sources by domain, so a page on a subdomain or on another domain you own can end up listed as someone else's unless you tell the tool it's yours.
In AnswerOrbit
To work out who owns a source, we check your website's exact address first, then your other domains, then your competitors'. Add every domain and address you use in Names in Settings, and if a domain lands in the wrong group in Sources, change it.