I did something pretty ignorant starting out.

similar sites same server

[jazzylee77]

Being of the mind that if you wait till you know how to do something it never gets done, I've made plenty of bungles starting out with some sites.

When registering a domain I was offered deals on the .biz .net .info variants and I went for it. Then it seemed a shame to just park them and with the bit I had learned about non-recipricol links I thought I'd just link them around in a non-recipricol way. Compounding this is other links from sites all on the same server. I have 10 domains on this server. It just seemed practical to use one control panel. 4 of them with very similar names and subject but different content.

I hate to just trash all the work I've done so far on them, but if that's the best course I'll bite the bullet. Is it too late to move them to other servers? I'm not sure the cost would be justifiable. How big a problem is this type of self linking? What if I just remove those links? Will the damage "heal"? Will linking to my sites on other servers spread the damage?

[jazzylee77]

I panicked a bit to quickly on this one...I do have different IP's! duh. Still wonder about the similar site names pointing to each other.

redwidgets.net, redwidgets.com, redwidgets.info redwidgets.biz all sure do like each other!

[martinibuster]

Well, how long do you think it will take to get your sites spam reported by a competitor if, just if, they all started ranking and dominated a majority of the top ten?

Having similar domain names is pretty obvious, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. Interlinking is a less good idea...

[LostOne]

You'll probably do okay in Yahoo and MSN, but Google is another story. I know of a site that does similar in my industry. They clogged up google SERPS until about a year ago--the main site still remains strong but the others are nowhere to be found--in Google that is.

My ,02

[McElvoy]

Hooray for Google. When are the others going to get smart?

[martinibuster]

Actually, Yahoo/Inktomi has traditionally been better against spam, especially duplicate content. Many people see their Yahoo traffic dry up months before their Google traffic disappears.

But we can go back and forth on that and it really doesn't matter because it's OFF TOPIC to this thread. ;)

So, anybody else have something to say about this person's predicament?

[caveman]

>Will the damage "heal"?

In most cases yes, at least on G, where they try to do everything possible with algo's, not human reviews. I've seen some sites wait a lot longer to get back into Y!, though Y! in my experience seems more responsive to reinclusion pleas if you've really cleaned up your act.

I'd delink these sites and start trying to get a lot of new inbound legit links...and most certainly not the same set of links coming into each site. Different sites, different IBL's. Also, to the greatest extent possible, break apart their content and templates where these things are shared across sites.

And, take care of all the basics: Different IP's, different WHOIS, etc.

SE's don't want to penalize sites; they want to weed out and/or penalize what they view as spammy sites.

[jazzylee77]

Thanks for all the replies. Sorry about my delayed response...had to go help my dad get around for a few days.

The sites all do have different content on the same subject. I think what I'll do is discontinue a couple of them , make sure there is linking or other relationship with the remaining couple and see what happens.

Maybe even narrow it down to one site in the subject area; I'll probably build a better quality site that way that will pull more traffic down the road than the multi-site approach anyway.

[spaceylacie]

I switched to a multi site approach about 6 months ago.. Google is sending me far less hits now even though I have alot more backwards links showing up. Hits from Yahoo are higher than ever.