grant - 2:25 am on Jun 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

A client of mine bought 100 domains, 90 of which are on the same class C IP, most whois info is randomized, and the sites are now cross-linking heavily. Most sites are PR 4, and, on Google, none of them rank well for a very non-competitive search term (less than 500 queries reported by Overture, few sites optimized for the KW). The sites rank fairly well on Inktomi.

I am being hired to "fix" the situation, and what I find interesting is the opportunity to have a massive linking experiment that I would otherwise not spend the money or energy doing.

I am about to do the following:
1. Move all sites to unique class C addresses (yea, it's kind of expensive, but the client is paying for it!)
2. Make sure all Whois info is unique
3. Re-architect the cross-linking

Now, #3 above is what I would like feedback on. I am operating under the assumption that Google noticed the massive cross linking on the same IP for the same KWs and is either penalizing, or simply not rewarding the sites for the links. I am also presuming (and I do believe this) that Google does not "remember" a site's penalty history (another client of mine was literally removed from the index and after I cleaned up the violations of TOS, it went right back into the pack and is performing well).

I plan on breaking the sites into 2 groups. Group A (about 35 sites) will only link to other sites in Group A, and Group B will link to sites in either group.

(Any advice on that?)

I am expecting to see the sites emerge from whatever penalties they have, and probably Group A ranking better (all other variables constant) than Group B.