HuskyPup - 6:08 pm on Mar 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

Ultimately I think it's very risky.

Possibly if one tries to hide or deceive the visitor they may get a manually applied penalty.

I first started the strategy of quality micro sites more than 10 years ago, it has been very successful across all search engines, even Yahoo!

I use the same company template layout and navigation for all sites which makes it easy for users as they cross from .com to co.uk to .cn etc and also from widget site to widget site etc. Some of my microsites are 100% to one specific widget for the most popular widgets.

Using a standard layout also makes it easier to create a new widget site plus, and I have been told this many times, that it gives the new business visitor confidence that we are not trying to hide behind many different facades, we are seen to be very trustworthy.

Of course it does help that we actually are one of the main global players within our widget trade but even after 15 years online it still surprises us when people say they have never heard of us or even seen our sites!