International Subdirectories
Placing each country or language in the first path segment of a single domain, such as a two-letter folder followed by the page.
Analogy Mental model
Opening every national concession inside one building you own. When any floor hosts an event that earns links, the reputation of the whole building rises, and a new floor inherits it on the day it opens.
In practice What you actually do
This is the recommended default for most brands and for hosted commerce platforms. All authority consolidates on a single root domain, so a newly launched locale can compete locally within days rather than quarters, and everything is managed in one codebase.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Being able to argue the trade-offs between this, subdomains, and national domains is a standard interview question. The axis is inheritance of authority against local trust against maintenance cost, and there is no single right answer.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →