Sub-domain versus sub-folder for feed driven site

[nordicpeacock]

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Here's a question I have come up against a few times and never settled on an answer. Maybe someone has experience with this ?

Scenario - I have a WP blog with a decent level of unique content, reviews etc, aged domain, ranks for name, some related terms and plenty of long-tail...

If I then want to spoil it all with a feed driven affiliate "shop" - using xml feeds so no chance of unique content, thousands of pages so potentially a killer for the SEO.

Where would you put it ?
I'm thinking sub-domain so as to keep the two separate, and not spoil the existing profile the aged site has... Of course this doesn't give the sub-domain site pages as much chance of ranking as if it was on a sub-folder but in these post Panda days maybe it wouldn't anyway.
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[dc000000]

just disallow the folder in robots.txt

job done

[sandy007]

Yes like dc000000 suggested you can block crawling from robots.txt. Now if you assume create a shop may be in subdomain or in sub folder then you can also mask the affiliate links in the site, for that you need to talk with your development team how to mask your affiliate feed so that the affiliate links not get crawled by Google.

[dietcola]

id go with the sub domain - and if you're really paranoid... put it on a different host...

thue the sub folder carries the domain age, so for languages in SEO its best on those i think. the sub domain is pretty separate and if you throw your juice and links in through your unique blog posts... leaking the juice at unique description/ context to product et al... then im sure that could assist the ranking... link into the product from a fancy image maybe...


my vote - sub domain