sub-domain or sub-directories - which one do you prefer?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Jim Munro: As you know, I am not an expert, Hyderali but if it were my website and I wanted to target the USA for example I would have a different product set suited to the market and definitely new product names, descriptions and photos. I would make it on a usa.woodentoys dot com subdomain and host the subdomain in the US.
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  Federico Sasso: Hi Hyderali,
  I confirm both domain and sub-directories are treated the same.
  
  It mainly depends on personal taste, but also ease of configuration can be taken into account in the choice: setting up sub-domain can be more complicated as it involves DNS). Another small difference is sub-domains have their own robots.txt file, adding a little extra maintenance effort.
  
  Yes, do add rel="alternate" hreflang="..", if the pages differ only in language but are actually semantically the same. That would help search engines to understand the relationship and serve the best page according to user language.
  
  Same content in different languages normally do not lead to duplicate content issues, except when the two languages are practically the same (e.g. en-US and en-UK). Even in such cases, using rel="alternate" hreflang=".." prevents Google to think they are duplicated content, so this is an extra reason to use it.
  
  Hope this helps
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  Hyderali Shaikh: Thanks +Jim Munro ; for your reply. Actually, it is a startup, so we don't have money to host it in US. ;
  
  Yes, +Federico Sasso ; I agree with all what you said. I'll ask him which he prefers depending on the ease of configuration like you said. He wants to target - US, UK, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Europe & few more. ;
  
  But suppose, if he chose sub-directories, how do I add the target country in webmaster tools? Also, if I add the hreflang it'll show the content as per the country language or not?
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  Collin Davis: Personal opinion here - I would look at creating sub folders rather than sub domain so that it strengthens my main domain. You could have something like en-US and then target as per sub folder in GWT
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  John Britsios: Have a look at this video with Matt Cutts: http://youtu.be/XNnMaYViYHc
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  Tony McCreath: From what I've read, go with what is easiest.
  
  I think they recomend using canonical for duplicated pages and hreflang if they are language/region specific.
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  Hyderali Shaikh: Thanks Guys!! Lets see what my client is upto.
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  Federico Sasso: Yes Hyderali, if you have a .com/.net or a ccTLD treated as neutral, you can set geo-targeting also at sub-folder level.
  While geo-targeting and hreflang are not the same, they have a strong correlation. Search results are geo-targeted driven by client IP address and local google site (e.g. google.co.au), and influenced by http accept-language attribute. It usually is very likely that a google.com.au user has en-AU language set
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  Justin Y: Follow what the leaders do in the industry. Personally I'd also go with subdirectory to build up the authority to root domain. Subdomain is like starting over, but I think the DA or some of it's carried over to the subd.