Subdomain vs subfolder for a new market: a controlled launch

Subdomain vs subfolder for a new market: a controlled launch

Hypothesis: launching a new German market on a subfolder (/de/) would inherit domain authority faster than a subdomain (de.). Methodology: rare clean test — same company launched two adjacent markets simultaneously, German on a subfolder and Austrian-German on a subdomain, comparable content volume (~800 URLs each), 5 months. Imperfect because the markets differ in size, but the German-language overlap makes it informative.

What the data suggests:
— Time-to-first-page for head terms: subfolder hit page one for 40% of tracked terms by week 9; the subdomain reached the same milestone at week 16. Roughly a 7-week head start.
— By month 5 the gap narrowed: subfolder 58% page-one, subdomain 51%. Convergence, not a permanent moat.
— Crawl stats (log files) showed the subfolder crawled 2.3x more frequently in the first month — likely the authority-inheritance mechanism in action.

Caveats: Austria is a smaller market with thinner demand, which confounds the click numbers; we leaned on ranking milestones instead. Google has stated subdomains and subfolders are treated similarly — our data shows a transient startup advantage, not a steady-state one.

Conclusion: subfolder bought a ~7-week ramp advantage that largely closed by month 5. For impatient launches it matters; long-term, less so.