What is better for SEO?: multiple sites or one big site

[SEO Idiot]

When putting together a travel site that offers many destinations worldwide, should one buy lots of domians, one for each destination, and make each one content rich on that destination, or should one buy one domain and have lots of destinations as subfolders in that site.

Which is better for SEO? and what are the reasons?

Thanks
SEO Idiot

[beu]

When putting together a travel site that offers many destinations worldwide, should one buy lots of domians, one for each destination, and make each one content rich on that destination, or should one buy one domain and have lots of destinations as subfolders in that site.

Which is better for SEO? and what are the reasons?

Thanks
SEO Idiot

one site, with perhaps a few redirects from other domains ie http://www.ipod.com

[SanDiegoSEO]

I would say one site would work best, since you're also building a brand and want to be known as the one place to go. Having multiple sites means you need to do that much more work in order to properly brand all the sites equally.

[spidergirl]

I would say one site. Having multiple sites can complicated a link building campaign since you will have to spread your efforts across many sites. Also since all the sites will be travel related obtaining a diverse set of links for each site will be challenging. Take ranking out of the equation and ask yourself what would the benefit to the user by having a site for each destination?

[Maikelpza]

If you want to score in different countries with different languages on one subject. Are more domains with a good keyword in that language not better than one site with for example an english keyword in the url.

Let's say I want to promote a website in 3 languages, should it be better to have 1 domain or 3.

I want to score on chambers(example)
I could say "www.chambers.com/zimmers" and ".../chambres"
Or "www.zimmers.de" and "www.chambres.fr"

Logical I would say i would score better with 3 different domains and even better with 3 different hosts(ip-addresses). I believe Google than sees 3 different websites, which are better optimizable than one domain. But I do not have any proof that this wil work and it is a lot more work than one website. Has anybody tried this before or is there any documentation of this idea.

[beu]

If you want to score in different countries with different languages on one subject. Are more domains with a good keyword in that language not better than one site with for example an english keyword in the url.

Let's say I want to promote a website in 3 languages, should it be better to have 1 domain or 3.

I want to score on chambers(example)
I could say "www.chambers.com/zimmers" and ".../chambres"
Or "www.zimmers.de" and "www.chambres.fr"

Logical I would say i would score better with 3 different domains and even better with 3 different hosts(ip-addresses). I believe Google than sees 3 different websites, which are better optimizable than one domain. But I do not have any proof that this wil work and it is a lot more work than one website. Has anybody tried this before or is there any documentation of this idea.

Not a good idea. IP addresses for the most part don't matter. Unless each site looks very different with different content chances are engines will pick one or maybe even pick them all up as spam. Matt Cutts talks about this in one of his videos. One website is the best idea.

[montux]

It depends on what you;re offering. If it is small business and selling some stuff and depending on SEO then i'd advice to have more then one. if you're a big brand, then one.