Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website?

Thanks

[MikeTek]

Hi vtmoz,

I see you have posted an updated question on this issue separately - regarding the spammy inbound links pointing to this subdomain. That is a more likely problem for your site.

That said, the more spam that shows up on that subdomain, the more likely Google is to seeing your site as part of a "bad neighborhood" of the web, and this could risk the organic visibility of your root domain.

There is no documentation on "how much spammy content is too much" - generally, some spammy content on a subdomain doesn't negatively impact the entire domain. However I have seen cases where an entire domain was negatively impacted by a very large number of spammy pages on various subdomains. It's a matter of scale.

If your rankings and traffic on your primary domain are important, my advice would be to mitigate the risk by either policing the content on your forum subdomains by bringing in admins, or shutting down the forums entirely.

Best,
Mike