You see, this conversation - interesting as it may be - is an example of how confusion arises. The constant reference to a blog being something different, whether it is actually located on the same domain as a 'site' or located somewhere else, cannot be true. My understanding is that a blog is a webpage or a series of them. A forum is a webpage, or a series of them. A website is a page or a series of them. And, in truth, the pages of a website do not have to be on the same domain - a website could be spread over many domains, for that matter, as long as the pages link together by navigation links.
I can see both points of view - if a visitor is tempted to go to a non-commercial portion of a website, they are distracted from buying something. If the non-commercial portion of a website is on the same domain as the commercial portion, the traffic to each section will be combined as the traffic to the whole site. There may be some advantage in that. But what does it serve having two separately functioning sites operating as one, just to combine their traffic?
I suppose Ford and Chrysler could join their websites under a single domain - fordandchrysler.com - just to be able to say their site gets more traffic than gm.com, but will they sell more cars?
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